The perpetual calendar watch is among the most useful complicated watches, as well as one of the most mechanically sophisticated – and it truly comes into its own today, a leap year day. Its complexity is what sets it apart from other calendar watches. The simplest calendar watch has just a date function, driven by gears that are toothed to measure cycles of 31 days. Consequently, it needs to be manually advanced at the end of any month that has fewer days – from September 30 to October 1, for example. Thanks to extra sets of gears, an annual calendar can differentiate between months with 30 and 31 days – but still, at the end of February, it must be manually advanced to March 1. Add even more gears and you get a perpetual calendar – quantième perpétuel in French, often abbreviated to QP. Not only does it correct itself every month, regardless of the number of days, it also takes into account the occurrence of leap years and, consequently, will display the correct date, day, month and moon phase in perpetuity – as long as the movement keeps running. There’s an anomaly, though: according to the Gregorian calendar, only one…
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