In rare instances, as in the Patek Philippe reference pictured above, a perpetual calendar can be combined with other complications like a chronograph for an even higher level of horological savoir faire. The complex movement in a perpetual calendar compensates for the length of every month, including February in both leap years and non-leap-years, meaning that it should not need adjusting until the year 2100, which is the next annum in which the Gregorian calendar’s leap-year cycle is disrupted: it will be the first year since 1900 that is exactly divisible by 100 but not by 400, and thus not a leap year. The most sophisticated type of calendar watch, a perpetual calendar is endowed with a mechanical “memory” that enables it to display the time, day, date, month, and often the moon-phase, accurately for many years. The Laurent Ferrier watch above opts for the analog-style "pointer" date display as described previously. Its movement compensates for the individual lengths of all the 30-day and 31-day months only at the end of February, which has either 28 or 29 days depending on the leap year, does the watch’s owner need to move the date forward to the 1st of March. As per its name, an annual calendar is designed to be manually adjusted by its wearer only once per year. Slightly more complex is the annual calendar, a complication first built into a wristwatch by Patek Philippe in 1996. The triple calendar might also include a moon-phase display and can be combined with other complications, like the Longines watch pictured above. It is the simplest type of calendar complication, requiring adjustment at the end of any month of a shorter duration than the default 31 days. Calendars: Triple CalendarĮssentially one step up in complication from a day-date, a triple calendar displays the day, date and month in a specific arrangement of windows, subdials, and/or analog hands. The Rolex Day-Date, for example, features the day in an aperture at 12 o’clock and the date in a window at 6 o’clock, as does the Junghans watch above. In a day-date watch, the day of the week and the date numeral appear in separate windows, often but not always adjacent to each other. Oris's Big Crown Pointer Date, a mainstay of that Swiss brand's collection since 1938, was one of the first watches to popularize the style. This type of date display uses a center-mounted hand that moves around the dial in daily increments to point to the current date on a numerical scale (1-31), usually on the periphery of the dial. Lange & Söhne and Glashütte Original have become synonymous with this complication, though several Swiss luxury brands offer it as well. This one also goes by “big date” “grande date,” or “panorama date,’ and is essentially just a larger version of the standard date display, though it usually uses two date disks (one for the tens numeral and the other for the ones) rather than one, and a double window, with each numeral appearing in its own framed aperture. Some watches, like the Rolex Submariner, enlarge this display by placing a magnifying lens over the window. Unless the watch is an annual or perpetual calendar, this date will need to be manually adjusted forward at the end of any month shorter than 31 days. Probably the most common of “small complications,” this is simply a display of the date via a numbered disk that passes under an aperture in the dial, usually positioned at 3 o’clock, 4:30, or 6 o’clock. Here we run down the major watch complications from the simplest to the most mechanically sophisticated, and provide an example of each. Despite the name, watch complications don't really have to be, well, all that complicated: that date display you glance at before signing a check qualifies as a complication even though it's not nearly as complex and dynamic as, say, the split-seconds chronograph you use to time racing laps or the world-time function you consult before making a call home on an international business trip. Learn more here.Ī watch complication, by definition, is any function offered by a timepiece that is in addition to its primary function of keeping the time. 0% interest for up to 24 months available on select brands.
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