Watches With Perpetual Calendar And Their Operation - Watches Factory China

For many, perpetual calendar watches are the pinnacle of watchmaking technology. The mechanisms necessary for a movement to distinguish the 31 days of January from the 30 of April, even the 28 days that February lasts every 4 years, are a true prodigy, only within the reach of some Watches Manufacturers.

Is it worth paying for a watch with a perpetual calendar? As fans and experts in this type of machinery, we believe that it is, and we will try to explain it in the next post.

What are perpetual calendar watches?

Perpetual calendar watches are those that are able to defy the inaccuracies of time.

In the calendar that we use in the West there are 7 months of 31 days, 4 months of 30 days and one of 27 or 28 days, watches with a perpetual calendar are capable of adapting to these irregularities.

This ability allows a watch to recognize the month in which it is located, therefore, it will be able to indicate May 1 after April 30, August 1 after July 31 and what is more incredible, the February 28 every 4 years, how?, through a mechanism that is activated every 4 years.

Thomas Mudge is the person who developed the first perpetual calendar in the year 1762, this clock can still be seen, it is in the British Museum in London, however, it would not be until two centuries later when the necessary mechanism to develop a perpetual calendar, it would reach commercial watches. In 1925, Patek Philippe was the first manufacturer capable of mass-producing a fully functional perpetual calendar. Four years later, it was Breguet who launched its own perpetual calendar, in a model that is still on sale today, the Breguet Perpetual Calendar.

The myth of the perpetual calendar in luxury watchmaking

There is a myth surrounding watches with a perpetual calendar, due to the complexity required to start a movement of this type. A single piece usually requires a month of work, including dozens of gears that, in other types of calendars, are not usually used. As you can imagine, these mechanisms cannot be misaligned in the slightest, since some of them work for a moment every four years.

There is a question that surrounds these watches that, although distant, should be answered, is what will happen when the year 2100 arrives and they are out of adjustment?

In the year 2100, February will not have 28 days, but 27, and therefore these clocks will suffer an imbalance, it will be necessary to adjust these calendars in some way, which will suffer a slight imbalance again in the year 2200.

Types of calendars in mechanical watches

We usually distinguish 5 different types of calendars in mechanical watches, they are the following:

Date: It is the simplest of all, in these watches the day is shown as a number in a window or with a date needle. It is necessary to adjust them whenever the month does not have 31 days.