Raketa honours Russia’s greatest cosmonaut with its back-to-front Code collection

Raketa is refining its Russian Code collection with an all-new case and a dial display of star constellations as they appeared over St Petersburg on April 12, 1961, the date Yuri Gagarin made history by becoming the first man into space.

Russian Code watches have been among Raketa’s most memorable pieces because they run backwards.

The brand Raketa, which means “Space Rocket” in Russian, was created in 1961 in honour of that first manned space flight by the Soviet cosmonaut.

Since then, Raketa’s designers and engineers have regularly made watches for use by cosmonauts and watches for the public celebrating the solar system.

Russian Code watches are not for the faint-hearted, Raketa admits, because they rebel against the universally accepted direction for a clockwise movement.

Raketa argues that the earth rotates on its north-south axis in a clockwise direction only when viewed from the north, where almost 90% of the global population lives.

But the cosmos is infinite in its possibilities, and cannot dictate which way is up, down, clockwise or anti-clockwise. It all depends on your point of view, which is why Raketa made the flip.

For example, Raketa, argues, the Sun doesn’t move clockwise in the sky. “It’s an illusion — it actually doesn’t move at all. It is the Earth that moves in a counterclockwise direction around the Sun,” the company says.

Raketa concedes that the inter-relationship between the sun and Earth causes shadows to move in a clockwise direction around a sundial, one of history’s earliest timekeepers, and this has set the direction for contemporary clocks and watches.

Raketa automatic 2615R movement is inverted in its case to reverse the direction of its hours and minutes hands.

The latest model comes in a 39.5mm circular stel case with an exhibition case back exposing the movement. It retails for €1,950 on a leather strap.