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1989 Patek Philippe Caliber 89 Why it Matters: The 89 is the most complex watch in the world. The Story: This huge watch now hangs in the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva. Commissioned for the 150th anniversary of the company in 1988, the watch has 33 complications and is about as big as a hockey [...]
1973 The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Why it Matters: This is the watch that made steel, titanium and ceramic popular watch materials. The Story: While the name invokes pork and stuffy French drawing rooms, Audemars Piguet (pronounced Aw-de-mar Pig-ay) was founded in 1854 and for years made high-end watches for an exclusive clientele. While its [...]
1933 Patek Philippe “Graves” Why it Matters: This beast held the “complicated” crown for more than 50 years. The Story: Not to be outdone by Packard, New York banker Henry Graves Jr. commissioned his own complicated watch from Patek Philippe. The result, called the Graves Complication, has 24 complications and sold for $11 million in [...]
1923 Patek Philippe “Packard” Why it Matters: The result of a bet, the Packard is one of the first ultracomplicated watches. The Story: James Ward Packard, of Packard automobile fame, wanted to own the most complex watch in the world. He sent his order to Patek Philippe in Switzerland and they sent back a watch [...]
1910 The Rolex Oyster Perpetual Why it Matters: The Rolex Oyster redefined where you could take a watch by making it waterproof. The Story: Like most great innovations, the Rolex merges two simple technologies to create something that no one thought they needed but then became indispensible. The technology, the perpetual movement, was first conceived [...]
1800 Perrin Freres “Wandering Hours Why it Matters: One of the first “digital” watches that used a unique system of hands to display the time. The Story: The vision of a “digital” watch—meaning one that showed the hours in minutes using rotating numerals instead of hands—has always been an important pursuit in watchmaking. Perrin Freres [...]
1794 William Anthony’s The Pearl Star Why it Matters: The Pearl Star is one of the first watches with expanding hands. The Story: Attributed to William Anthony of London, this pocket watch has an oblong case with automatically extending hands. When the hands are at noon, for example, they are fully extended up to the [...]
Time is considered one of our most valuable assets. The keeping of time goes all the way back to the beginning of civilization. Both historians and archeologists believe that stationary and portable sun-dials were probably developed in Egypt or Mesopotamia. The oldest extant sun-dial can be found in Egypt and dates back to 1500 BCE. [...]
The name Cartier is synonymous with beautiful objects of quality and style. Although Cartier are perhaps better known for their fine jewellery, their signed wristwatches have made a huge impression on the global watch market and have become increasingly collectable over the years. Many of their fabulous watches can be regarded as pieces of jewellery [...]
1780, Launch of the self-winding Perpétuelle watch whose à secousse mechanism was better suited to pocket watches than Abraham-Louis Perrelet’s rotor system. 1783, Invention of the gong spring for repeater watches. Creation of Breguet hands and numerals 1783, Commissioning of the socalled Marie-Antoinette watch which, after numerous interruptions, was completed in 1827 It is acknowledged [...]
