The UNO 24 is the first 24-hour one-hand watch from Botta-Design. The unconventional 24-hour one-hand display principle used in the UNO 24 allows the wearer to get a sense of how time is progressing over the day as a whole at a single glance. While each position of the hands can have two meanings in a conventional watch – for example 4:00 am or 4:00 pm – the position of the hand in the UNO 24 is clearly assigned to a particular time of day. The use of the one-hand principle and the intelligent design of the watch face means even a casual glance is enough to tell how far the current day has progressed. This is because the dial of this 24-hour watch is divided by an artificial horizon into a day half and a night half. In the early morning the hand rises above the horizon on the dial, symbolizing the rising sun. Once the sun has reached its zenith, the hand also points vertically upwards. At the onset of evening, the hand reaches the bottom “night” half of the dial – when it reaches the date line at midnight the date jumps forward and the next day begins.
Once again, Botta-Design pioneered a new development: ever since its introduction, the UNO 24 has triggered a wave of copycat 24-hour one-hand watches. The ingenious idea of a wristwatch with a 24-hour display and just one hand is the logical follow-up to the UNO one-hand watch which Klaus Botta developed back in 1986. The UNO employs the one-hand principle to display the current time clearly and unambiguously in a 12-hour format. The UNO 24 goes one step further – it shows the progression of time over the course of the day in clear and graphic analogue form. Although the UNO 24 allows the wearer to obtain a very rough idea of the time at a glance, the delicate hand and the fine scale mean that the time can be told to an accuracy of just a few minutes after a brief period of familiarization. Thus the UNO 24 is an exceptional 24-hour watch with just one hand that enables its wearer to approach time in an entirely new manner.