Whats are Complication’s in Watches

Written by James Matthews

No one likes to here that there were Complication’s in anything! Especially our beloved time-pieces! However we see more and more watch with features called “Complication’s”! Here is what that means…

A “complication” is any function in a watch other than to give the hours, minutes and seconds. Complication watches inhabit a fascinating, and prolific, world in which generations of craftsmen demonstrate the full extent of their ingenuity and creativity. A world at the forefront of innovation.

 

To visually display the hours, minutes and possibly seconds is accepted as the basic function of a modern watch. But it hasn’t always been so: sometimes timepieces had a striking mechanism before they had hands. Indeed, the minute hand only appeared after 1675, and the seconds hand not until the latter half of the eighteenth century. Regardless, the very first pocket watches (late fifteenth century) incorporated numerous other functions.

 

More often than not these were striking mechanisms and astronomical indications inherited from the great clocks of the Middle Ages. Advances in timekeeping precision laid the way for watches for measuring short intervals with the invention of the chronograph in the early nineteenth century. Watchmakers have imagined an array of complications inspired by everyday life, such as multiple time zones. Not forgetting complications by concept and production such as the tourbillon, or jumping and retrograde displays which, while not additional “functions” in the strictest sense, set a higher standard of difficulty.

 

A passion for the exceptional has also inspired watchmakers to combine the greatest possible number of functions in ultra-complicated watches. During the twentieth century, all these complications raised new challenges when they had to be shrunk to fit inside a wristwatch case. The revived interest in mechanical watches in the late nineteen-eighties ushered in a new golden age for complication watches. Watchmakers endlessly innovate with original functions, by perfecting existing mechanisms, and providing more comfort of use for the watch’s owner. The world of complication watches is a rich and ever-changing one. We can only hope to offer a glimpse of this fascinating universe, and recommend the abundant reference works on this subject.

 

Movado known for it’s museum dial, make other watches that have complications.

This post was written by James Matthews. If you have any questions or comments you may contact him at james@jewelerslounge.com