What is perpetual calendar

The majority of calendar watches feature simple calendars which have to be manually corrected five times a year, after each month with fewer than 31 days.

Compare these with the Perpetual Calendar , one of the culminations of the watchmaker's art whose origins go back to the end of the eighteenth century. It will continue to show the correct date by adjusting to the variable number of days in the month and by taking the cycle of leap years into account. Not only does it house within its beautiful, platinum case an instantaneous perpetual calendar with aperture displays, but also wait for it a minute repeater and a tourbillon.

Patek Philippe ref. Its ingenuity lies in its understated simplicity; at first glance the simple, elegant dial appears only to offer an annual calendar and moonphase, but only to be discovered once worn that it automatically accounts for the irregular month of February and leap years. David Duggan is actively looking to buy watches from the public.

Four vintage watches that rocked the June auctions David Duggan takes a look at four classic timepieces that recently fetched staggering sums at auction. Our Favourite Watch Hands If you want to know your Breguet from your Snowflake, consult David Duggan's expert guide. In Profile: Patek Philippe Twenty-4 As long as the timepiece is wound and running, the calendar complication will be functional and accurate.

An annual calendar complication is a complete calendar displaying day, date and month with minimal adjustment. The complication automatically adjusts the date displayed on the timepiece based on and day months to ensure that the correct date is always displayed. Some of these gears will only be called into action once every four years.

The mechanism is a huge network of interconnected pieces where the gears for the seconds, minutes, hours, days, and months trigger one another. Jaeger-LeCoultre is known as the watchmaker's watch brand because of its dedication to technically challenging timepieces. Out of all the wonderfully superfluous things you can get on a watch, the perpetual calendar is certainly at the top of the list.

The watches that have them are so impressively built that the only thing with the power to destroy them is the rhythm of the earth, which The Guardian notes is extending the day slowly but surely. Hodinkee notes that this means perpetual calendar watches made now will finally be made irrelevant over a billion years from now.