Triple Calendar | Moon Phases | Polished Tempered Steel | 1895
Series: GREAT COMPLICATIONS
By: Sílvio Pereira
Triple Calendar with Moon Phases - 1
- Large-format Lépine-type pocket watch. Triple calendar with moon phases. Dated 1895
- Functions: hours, minutes, seconds, date, day of the week, month and moon phases
- Serial number: none
- Manufacture: anonymous
- Country - Switzerland
- Calibre: classic bridge layout. Unnumbered
- Movement protection: dust cover in tempered steel.
- Escapement type: Swiss lever
- Balance: bimetallic, temperature-compensated, with Breguet hairspring
- Power reserve: 36 hours
- Frequency: 18000 A/h
- Jewels: 15
- Case material: polished tempered steel
- Dial: enamel, with no flaws or hairlines
- Small seconds: at 6 o'clock
- Date: at 9 o'clock
- Months: at 12 o'clock
- Days of the week - 3 o'clock
- Moon phases: at 6 o'clock
- Case diameter: 66.2 mm
- Thickness: 21.9 mm
- Weight: 199 g
- The mainspring is wound by the crown at 12 o'clock.
- Hands: Louis XV style. Set by the crown, with a push-piece to release the stem at 1 o'clock.
- Numerals: Roman for the hours, Arabic for the five-minute intervals and "chemin de fer" style indexes for the rest.
- Seconds: Arabic for the five-second intervals and indexes for the rest.
- Crystal: in excellent condition.
- Case back numbering: none
Overall assessment - A triple calendar watch with moon phases in immaculate condition.
Triple Calendar with Moon Phases - 2
The calendar watch
We all know that the year has 365/6 days, months with different numbers of days and that one of them, February, also changes every four years. As is quickly understood, this was a real problem for the creation of watches intended to show not only the time but also the date.
The creation of the calendar
The division of the calendar into months began with the Romans. In antiquity they had a year divided into ten different months, plus a few intercalated periods. Curiously, the length of the year was decided by the Pontifex (a member of a council of priests in ancient Rome). As might be expected, this system caused great confusion.
Under Julius Caesar (100 BC - 44 BC), who was Pontifex Maximus in 46 BC, the calendar was reformed to be more accurate. The new system, called the Julian calendar, was more precise and made up of 12 months.
The first Julian calendar
In addition to the traditional ten months, with a 28-day February, the two new ones were named in honour of the Caesar dynasty. That is why the two new months took the names July and August, after the two emperors, Julius and Augustus, who formed the Caesar dynasty.
These two new months left the other four months, up to the end of the year, inaccurate as to the meaning of their names. September, which was the seventh month, as its name derives from “septem”, became the ninth, and so on.
This new system was far more accurate than the previous one. However, it did not take into account that solar time is six hours longer than that provided for by the “basic” Julian calendar.
This problem was only solved 1,500 years later.
The calendar we use today was introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII (1502-1585) and was an update of the Julian calendar; it is named “Gregorian” in his honour.
Pope Gregory XIII
This system was introduced after calculations by astronomers established that the Julian calendar was inaccurate — so much so that over the 1,500 years of its use it had drifted several days out of step with solar time.
Gregory XIII was not interested in astronomy as such: he simply wanted Easter to fall as close as possible to the spring equinox every year. His solution was to add an extra day every four years to keep the calendar in step with the seasons.
The calendar in the watch
The most basic watches tell only the time, but others offer further functions that have been given the name “complications”. One of the most common kinds of complication is the date.
A date complication can be as simple as just the day of the month in a window on the dial, or as sophisticated as a perpetual calendar complication. Compared with other, more complex complications, such as a tourbillon or phases of the moon, the date complication is relatively simple. However, the perpetual calendar complication is one of the most complex versions of a date complication. It is somewhat similar to an annual calendar complication, which displays the date, the day of the week and the month. The difference between the perpetual and the annual calendar lies in how the function operates. An annual calendar requires manual adjustment once a year to account for the leap year. The perpetual complication, by contrast, takes care of the leap year itself. It can therefore run correctly without manual adjustment for hundreds of years. One of the most fascinating and intricate complications in a watch is the perpetual calendar complication.
As we have already seen, watches can feature up to three types of calendar, represented by small windows or dials that usually show the date, the day of the week and the month. A simple calendar counts 31 days. As such, it cannot tell whether the month has 28, 29 or 30. Then there is the annual calendar, which is adjusted to the 12-month calendar and distinguishes months of 30 or 31 days - but requires a yearly reset when the calendar changes in February. The jewel in the crown is the perpetual calendar, which is programmed to display the correct date even through leap years, for many years.
History of the perpetual calendar watch
Although the perpetual calendar mechanism had been used in clocks as early as 1695 by Tompion
Thomas Tompion
and by his successor Graham
George Graham
Thomas Mudge is often cited as the first person to adapt it to a watch.
Thomas Mudge
Today only two perpetual calendar watches by Mudge are known: no. 525, which is in a private collection, and no. 574, which is on display at the British Museum and whose original gold case is hallmarked for the year 1764.
Thomas Mudge 525, sold on 7 July 2016 by Sotheby's for £60,000.00
Thomas Mudge No. 574 on display at the British Museum
In 1981, Dr George Daniels wrote an article on Thomas Mudge for Antiquarian Horology and assigned the year 1762 to the movement of watch no. 525. The one in the British Museum is dated 1765, just three years later. Despite the early examples of the perpetual calendar being applied to clocks, no complete perpetual calendar watch is known, with any degree of reliability, from before 1762. For many years it was assumed that Abraham Louis Breguet had been the first to incorporate a perpetual calendar, when in 1783 he began building his famous “Marie Antoinette”, which included one.
Both Mudge perpetual calendar watches, nos. 525 and 574, are mechanically and visually similar. Great attention was paid to the design of the dial to ensure that it was practical and easy to read. The date is indicated by a gold marker above the 12 o'clock position, read against a revolving disc – this ring is designed to take into account the correct number of days in the month. There is a large aperture for the moon phases and two larger apertures lower down to the left and right. The left-hand aperture shows the months of the year, each with its number of days engraved below. February has its own subsidiary dial indicating the length of the month and the leap year. The right-hand aperture shows the days of the week. It is also notable that both Mudges, numbers 525 and 574, have a ruby cylinder, as he was one of the first watchmakers to incorporate this important technical development.
Thomas Mudge (1715-1794) was born in Exeter and was later sent to London where, on 4 May 1730, he was apprenticed to George Graham. In 1738 Mudge set up his own business near Graham in Fleet Street. In 1750 William Dutton, who had also been apprenticed to Graham, leaving in 1746, joined Mudge. At first their watches continued to be signed 'Thomas Mudge', but in the 1760s the signature was changed to Mudge & Dutton.
Thomas Mudge's invention of the lever escapement in 1757 cemented his reputation as one of the most important watchmakers in England.
Detailed drawing of Thomas Mudge's lever escapement
More than 250 years later, the lever escapement still dominates the production of mechanical watches worldwide. Besides his innovations in precision timekeeping, Mudge also built what may be considered the first watch with equation of time, the first with a perpetual calendar and the first with feedback in the gear train. In 1771 Mudge moved to Plymouth, where he continued to work on perfecting his marine chronometers.
The different ways of displaying the date on watches
Watches with a simple calendar function are not very complex to manufacture. The date/day-of-the-week mechanism also adds very little to the cost of a watch.
Watch with simple date
Even though the simplest models may have a double date function, showing both the day of the month and the day of the week, the date complication is highly valued in watchmaking and has been fundamental to the design of many luxury watches.
Watch with double date
Take, for example, this handsome Glashutte Original Senator Panorama Date, which combines the elegant and unexpected design of its dial and its twin-disc date display with a moon phase indicator.
The real problem is that these simple mechanisms have no way of telling months of 28/29, 30 or 31 days apart, so they have to be adjusted by hand in February, April, June, September and November. Most of the simpler watches offer this simple date and day-of-the-week function, or just the date.
On the next level up we have the so-called annual calendar.
The annual calendar function was introduced at the end of the year 1900. It is also called a triple date and can identify the months of 30 and 31 days automatically, but it cannot add a day to February on leap day every four years.
One of the watches that include this complication is the handsome Corum Admiral's Cup Legend 42 annual calendar.
As can be seen, this watch has the brand's iconic 12-sided design. The date is shown by a sub-dial at six o'clock, for the months, and a central hand that points to the day of the month on the elegant dial with its vertical barleycorn guilloché motif.
This type of watch therefore has to be adjusted by hand only once a year, in February.
The third group of watches, the most complete and most complicated, is the one incorporating the so-called perpetual calendar. That is, by means of an intricate series of mechanisms called the “equation of time”, they are able to adjust for leap years as well.
Some are so advanced that they can calculate solar time, which the Gregorian calendar does not cover – because our current system is almost perfect, but not entirely.
So a perpetual calendar really ought to be… perpetual. It will have ways of solving this problem, so that the civil year stays consistent with the astronomical year, and it will work until the year 2100.
Above we can see an example of a watch with a perpetual calendar: the Audemars Piguet Classique Perpetual Calendar, a beautiful and elegant watch with a platinum case, showing off its complex, mesmerising calibre through the glass display back.
There is yet another level of dating accuracy: the last type of watch uses a correction mechanism that tackles the great question of calculating the centennial leap year.
We are talking about secular perpetual calendar watches. Only a few are in production - they are exceptionally rare - and, well, if perpetual calendars are exceptional, these watches reach an unrivalled level of watchmaking insanity.
So what is a centennial leap year? The Gregorian calendar, for all its complexity, is not perfect. There is a small residual error, which is corrected by the Gregorian cycle every hundred years.
In short, to correct this small residual mismatch, the Gregorian system also introduced a special secular leap cycle. Only the century years divisible by 400 are counted as leap years. So the century years 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200 and 2300 were not or will not be leap years, and have only 28 days in February, whereas 2000 was, and 2400 will be.
As you can imagine, this additional level of complexity, while addressing a minimal error, wreaks havoc on the orderly mechanical dreams of the typical watchmaker.
The existence of this further exception means that perpetual calendars need an additional control that knows exactly when the leap year does and does not occur in relation to the secular period.
So, if combining gears and wheels to calculate a “simple” perpetual calendar was not the easiest of tasks, enabling a mechanism to calculate this exception becomes almost impossible.
But a few makers have achieved that feat.
Above we have one of the few wristwatches in production (to date, there have been three in history) with this extraordinary complication: the Svend Andersen Secular Perpetual Calendar. This watch is programmed to be accurate until the year 2400, a feat some may find superfluous. The watch would have to run continuously until then – the problem is that every watch has to be cleaned and lubricated every five to ten years…
The 10,000-year clock
If you think there can be nothing more accurate than this, you are wrong. Even if, in this case, it is not a wristwatch we are talking about.
There is a project to build a mechanical clock that will run for 10,000 years.
This ambitious project is backed by Jeff Bezos, until very recently the richest man in the world.
The 10,000 Year Clock is being created by the Long Now Foundation. This clock is intended to run for 10,000 years – and since the first traces of our modern civilisation date back some 6,000 years, it is not hard to see that this is an ambitious undertaking.
Prototype of the 10,000-year clock
The clock was designed to generate its own power from solar and thermal energy. These sources alone are believed to be enough to keep the clock running, but visitors will be encouraged to wind the clock so that it can show the current time. It is a process that will save energy and make it possible to see how many visitors have interacted with the clock.
The clock is still under construction – but prototypes have been built, such as the one shown above, as a small sample of what the final result will be like.
The first perpetual calendar wristwatch
Patek Philippe was the creator of the first wristwatch with a perpetual calendar. They produced the first compact perpetual calendar movement in 1898, for a ladies' pendant watch. In 1925, a wealthy collector of Patek Philippe watches named Thomas Emery commissioned the first wristwatch with this complication.
Patek's first perpetual calendar wristwatch, from 1925. Ref: 97975
Patek Philippe used the same compact 34.4 mm calibre created in 1898. It took Patek two years to produce this intricate watch.
Breguet was the second brand to create a perpetual calendar wristwatch, just a few years later, in 1929.
Breguet's first perpetual calendar wristwatch, from 1929
Its compact movement was even smaller than Patek Philippe's, measuring just 22.5 mm.
Jaeger LeCoultre's first perpetual calendar wristwatch, from 1937
This unique rectangular perpetual calendar watch is believed to have been created to commemorate the partnership between Antoine LeCoultre and Edmond Jaeger that gave rise to the Jaeger LeCoultre brand.
The perpetual calendar complication through the decades
Like the original perpetual calendar wristwatch made by Patek Philippe, most of the early perpetual watches were made only to order. From the 1940s onwards, series production of perpetual calendar watches increased. From the 1960s the first automatic perpetual calendar watches began to be made. Another significant moment for the perpetual calendar complication came in 1985. That year IWC made one of the most far-reaching advances in the complication's mechanism. They designed a synchronised calibre that uses just a single crown for setting, as on a simpler watch.
An IWC Portuguese perpetual calendar, on which all adjustments are made via the crown
Today the complication continues to fascinate watchmakers and watch enthusiasts. Some of the most elaborate and expensive watches feature the perpetual calendar complication, making them highly valuable.
The perpetual calendar function does not merely serve the practical purpose of showing the day, the date and the month without adjustment. It serves to elevate the art of fine watchmaking.
Some iconic models
Patek Philippe
Breguet
Audemars Piguet
Jaeger LeCoultre
IWC Pilot
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