Watch Complications: A Simplified Guide | SwissWatchExpo

Watch complications can sometimes be difficult to understand, but in fact, they’re designed to simplify your life! Here's a quick explainer for each one.
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- By Greubel Forsey [CC BY 3.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons
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- Stuhrling Tourbillon Movement (HD) video By Eric Kilby [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr

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Transcript:

Watch 101. Watch Complications. A Simplified Guide.

Watches have always been designed to do more than simply tell time. From watches for cave explorers to those that can be worn in space, they’ve always catered to the activities of man.

Thus, the watch complication came to be – a function that exists in addition to telling the time. Here’s a quick guide to each of them.

Let's start with the simplest complication – the date. It displays just that, the day’s date, typically in the 3 o’clock position. This function has to be manually adjusted at the end of 30-day months, as well as at the end of February, to reflect the proper date.

The Day-Date meanwhile, displays the date, as well as the day of the month. It is typically displayed on an aperture at the 12 o’clock position, with the date still at the 3 o’clock position. It could be an abbreviated version, or the day can be spelled out completely, as seen here on the Rolex Day-Date.

Here is one of the most popular complications, the chronograph. A chronograph watch is basically a stopwatch or timer. It allows the wearer to measure and record periods of time, but without affecting the time-telling functions of the watch. The basic chronograph has two “pushers” that are used to start, stop, and reset the time, and chronograph sub-dials that display the counter. It can be used to track time for various activities such as cooking times, meetings, parking meters, and more.

Now, we’ll get to watches that tell different times at once. A GMT Watch tells the wearer two timezones at once using the starting point of international time zones, the Greenwich Mean Time. Typically, a GMT hand will have the hour-hand that tells time on a 12-hour scale; then another colored hour-hand (seen here in red) is added to tell the second time, usually on a 24-hour format on the bezel.

Dual time watches, as the name suggests, display two different times at once. The difference with GMT, is that it displays time on a 12-hour format. Most commonly, you’ll see the second time at a subdial at 6 o’clock, showing the time on a 12-hour scale. Just like two clocks in one watch!

Now this one’s pretty advanced. A World Timer shows the time in all 24 timezones across the world, at once. The watch does this through a rotating bezel that shows major cities around the world, with a corresponding bezel that indicates time on a 24-hour scale.

Let’s move on to calendar complications. An annual calendar, seen here, is like the date watch, but this time, it also shows the month of the year. Moreover, it automatically adjusts the date displayed on the watch based on 30- and 31-day months. However, it still requires setting the date once per year, at the end of February which has less then 30 days.

Now here’s a perpetual calendar, which requires even less intervention than the annual calendar. Not only does it adjust for 30- and 31-day months, but will also automatically adjust for leap years. The next time perpetual calendars have to be adjusted is in year 2100. Impressive, isn’t it?

Now here’s a watch that tells more than the time, and the date. The Moon Phase displays both, and also tracks the present phase of the moon. It does so by calculating the lunar cycle of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3 seconds. A moonphase watch has a beautiful rotating disk that indicates whether it is new, full, half or quarter moon. A minute repeater audibly chimes the current time on demand, through a series of dings and dongs, and by activating a push- or slide-piece on the watch. Beautiful isn’t it?

No longer commonly used today, repeaters were created to help the visually-impaired tell time or to tell time when there was no electricity yet. Today, they are coveted for their ingenious engineering and beautiful sound.

And finally, we have the tourbillon, which is the most complex, elusive, and most expensive of all complications. The tourbillon was created to counter the effects of the Earth’s gravity on the accuracy of the watch movement.

See? Watch complications can sometimes be, well, complicated. But, used properly, they can definitely simplify your life.

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