A Complication and its Features

Sun, 22 October 2006

The "headquarters" of all complications is Switzerland. Around 500 Swiss watch brands create various timepieces with different functions. Most expensive and exclusive timepieces are called complicated because their construction requires much more time and money than the usual mechanical timepieces.

A complication is a mechanism with many component parts which in their turn provide additional functions to the watch. Thus besides showing hours, minutes and seconds a watch can have such functions like: chiming, alarm, chronograph, annual or perpetual calendar, moon phase indicator and many more. Complicated watches are valued more than ordinary watches which is why they are more collectable.

Annual Calendar
The annual calendar represents one of the features of a complication. This one, however, is not very common among mechanical watches. The annual calendar automatically adjusts months with 30 and 31 days. Thus the day, month and 24 hours indicators, situated in an aperture of a watch, need to be corrected once a year, and namely from the end of February to March 1.

The first annual calendar was patented by Patek Philippe in 1996. The annual calendar can be considered as the middle between an ordinary and a perpetual calendar, which are more commonly used in a mechanical watch.

Perpetual Calendar

This calendar is commonly used in different complications. This feature comprises the specific aspects of the Gregorian calendar. The calendar is called "perpetual" because it automatically adjusts to months that have 30 days as well as to 28 or 29 days of February. Thus it is able to calculate the leap years. Inside the mechanism there is a mechanical memory the sequences of which are repeated very 48 months.

Alarm, 1/100th of a second chronograph with split and additional times
Countdown timer
second time-zone with independent alarm
UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) perpetual calendar.

The perpetual calendar, however, will need to be corrected in 2100 because of the quirk in the Gregorian calendar. The latter states that every fourth century is not a leap year. This gives the fine watchmakers quite a challenge in creating a complication. Today the technology of creating a perpetual calendar is known to watchmakers. Despite this fact every watchmaking company strives to create a different perpetual calendar.

They are perfecting the mechanisms and try to fit them in even smaller cases. Today complications have a wide range of perpetual calendar displays. There are some rare timepieces that include a calendar which is able to calculate this particularity of the Gregorian calendar. This feature is called "Secular Calendar".

Chronograph
Chronograph is another addition function that can be found in a complication watch. It allows the timepiece to act as a stopwatch. Thus the watch is able to start and stop timing a certain event. A chronograph may have different variations. Some chronographs operate with center seconds hand. They track the time on the main dial. Most commonly used chronographs use sub-dials to display the elapsed hours, minutes and seconds.

Depending on the chronograph the accuracy of a stopwatch function can vary from 1/5th to 1/100th of a second. There are chronographs that are able to track the time up to 24 hours. The timepieces that include a stopwatch function are themselves called "chronographs". The latter can be more complex and comprise specialized scales on the face and bezel of a watch. Such chronographs are able to determine speed or distance.

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