Audemars Piguet perpetual calendar

The complete history of Audemars Piguet perpetual calendar

Wild, anti-traditional, rebellious
Imagine you are invited to a solemn ancestral house for dinner. Sitting in front of you is the living incarnation of the Trinity of the Swiss Haute Horlogerie brand to fit the human form of the dinner party. The first to greet you is Patek Philippe. Patek Philippe is the golden boy in this family. He is a tailor-made Fulbright scholar by Anderson and Shepard, graduated from Harvard Law School and Trinity College in Cambridge, and his future is oriented towards sacred and unstoppable perfection.

The second caraceni, named Vacheron Constantin, is darker, taller, thinner and more perfect; introspective but very clever, insisting on the synergy between Euclidean geometry and Sufi mysticism contact.

Then you will hear the door closing. There, his Cifonelli tuxedo was splattered with paint and trousers tucked into motorcycle boots, his shoulder-length hair was messed up on his vintage Norton race car, starting from the idyllic creek house, he was guiding his mother to just divorce His friend entered Tantric art and was a wild child.

He has hypnotism and looks like a movie star. Think of Jason Momoa leading Byron. This is luxury Audemars Piguet. Because although Audemars Piguet’s Swiss Haute Horlogerie brand is impeccable in terms of surface treatment and elegance, my favorite quality of Le Brassus-based manufacturers is their wild, anti-traditional, and rebellious creativity, which produces Some of the greatest game-changing moments in the history of timepieces have shaped the entire concept of style, incorporating technological innovations from the 20th century and beyond.

Many Audemars Piguet or AP’s most determined devotees believe that the extremely bold Royal Oak conceived by Gérald Genta saved the brand from the shock of the quartz crisis Come out, this crisis has discouraged many competitors. There is no doubt that the Royal Oak is an earthquake in the glory of the watch industry.

But in fact, the true heroes of Audemars Piguet have come up with a brilliant tactical plan to fight against the destruction of the cheap quartz invasion. Their names sound like aliases for resistance fighters. They are Michel “Le Mic” Rochat, Jean-Daniel Golay and Wilfred Berney. For the purpose of this story, they will be referred to as the RGB team.

They will be helped by two extraordinary people: the first is AP’s owner Georges Golay (called “Uncle George” by the Bottinelli family, one of the families behind the brand), a truly outstanding leader in this pioneering period; The second is a design genius named Jacqueline Dimir, who in some ways is a disciple of the legendary Gerald Genta.

How do they avoid the destruction of the quartz crisis, causing other brands to abandon mechanical watchmaking, destroy their lathes and presses, and sell movements by weight? With the advent of the world’s thinnest automatic perpetual calendar watch, this movement is still one of the most important initiatives in the history of horology.

Michael Friedman, a well-loved historian and head of the complication department of the Associated Press, said: “Think about the situation in 1978. No one made complicated watches, let alone a perpetual calendar. In fact, the only one so far One brand that continuously produces perpetual calendar watches is Patek Philippe.

Their watch model at the time was 3448 (launched in 1961), which was a round “disco volante” watch with a diameter of 37 mm and a thickness of 11 mm. Then we introduced the reference 5548, which is significantly thinner at 7 mm.

This is such a bold watch. Because it is saying to the world swept by the quartz boom, “Wait, look at our ability in mechanical watchmaking.” In the size of a quartz watch, we put a mechanical supercomputer. Due to its exquisite and elegant size, 5548 has become a modern symbol just like the Royal Oak before it. “

In the context of this era, it is important to understand that although quartz watches have begun to dominate consumers with their consistent accuracy and low prices, there are no complicated quartz watches. Complications, especially the perpetual calendar, are the manifestations of mechanical watchmaking. (The young Jean-Claude Biver worked at Audemars Piguet, and then set up Blancpain to support complex mechanical watchmaking, which taught him a lesson. But, of course, if we can time travel, then the question to the trio of Rochat, Golay, and Berney will be: “Why is it a perpetual calendar?”

Okay, let’s stop here to explain what a perpetual calendar is. The reason we have a four-year leap year cycle is that a 365-day year is actually shorter than a true solar year (approximately 365.25 days). This means that we accumulate a small amount of debt every year, once every four years, and the extra day is February 29.

If you want to get more technology, every 100 years, leap years will be omitted, because leap days will cause a slight time surplus. In any case, the perpetual calendar is an extraordinary watch that can display complete calendar information of the day, date, and month, usually the moon phase. Now the perpetual calendar is very smart. Just like Asian mothers, they are always right. If they are dogs, they will be border collies that meet the MENSA standard, capable of solving complex algorithms, while composing haiku, and singing Verdi’s operas in Italian with perfect pitch and perfect pronunciation when shedding the sheep. why?

Because they can automatically compensate for the 30/31 rhythm of monthly changes, and calculate the 28 days of February, and even know when the extra day of each leap year is. http://www.cheapestwrist.co