Thursday, August 7, 2008

The World's Most Complicated Luxury Watch.

If a simple Mechanical Watch is comprised of give or take 130 parts, and one of the most expensive watches in the world, the Vacherin Constantin Tour de I'lle, contains 834 parts, then the Watch with the most parts would be ...?

...1728 parts. That is 1728 individually crafted pieces working in complete harmony. The watch in question is the Calibre 89 crafted by Patek Phillipe. This watch was crafted to commemorate the 150 year anniversary of Patek Phillipe. It took five years of research and four years of crafting to complete. Patek Phillipe declares that "it is the most complicated watch in the world. It weighs 2.4 lbs , is 18K gold, and has a amazing 24 hands.

A complex Watch indicates much more information than the time of day (which up until a couple of hundred years ago was no mean feat). This extra information indicated on the watch is called a complication.

The complications on the Calibre 89 include:
Day of the month, Day of the week, 12-hour recorder, Hour of second time zone,moon phase display, winding crown position indicator;century, decade and year displays (I suppose Patek Phillipe expects this watch to last quite a long time), Leap year indicator,Power reserve, month, thermometer,Date of Easter, Time of Sunrise, Equation of Time, Star Chart, Sun Hand, Time of Sunset and split second hand. There are only four in the world, and one was sold in Geneva for 6,6 million Swiss francs.

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