Perpetual Calendar Watches

Citizen Skyhawk

Perpetual calendar watches are designed to combat the intricacies and inconsistencies in our calendar and to show the date accurately at all times. The invention of the complex perpetual calendar mechanism that first achieved this is credited to Abrahain-Louis Breguet, a renowned watchmaker and horologist, at the beginning of the 1800’s.

For the last 500 years we have used the Gregorian calendar,which poses a number of technical difficulties to the watchmaker when making a perpetual calendar watch.  The problems are the uneven amount of days in each month and a leap year every 4 years, which adds a day to the end of February. Each deviation from the 31 day month requires a special function to remain accurate. If you consider that each one must be achieved by fundamentally a system involving little more than cogs and levers you can appreciate how difficult a task this is, especially when you consider that it must also be small and light enough to be worn as a wristwatch!

The amount of time that it actually takes the sun to orbit around the earth is 365.2422 days. A normal simple calendar watch counts a year as 372 days, 31 days for each month. This means that the date will have to be adjusted 6 or 7 days throughout the year to remain accurate. A perpetual calendar watch measures a year as 365.25 days. There is a small discrepancy between that and the real measurement but it is so small that a perpetual calendar watch will only have to be adjusted 3 times in every 400 years, which is pretty good going.

Those who require perpetual accuracy from their watch often want to wear a watch of the highest calibre. Citizen Skyhawk watches are a prime example of this. They are high-end watches that deliver on every aspect of watch technology, they are solar powered and radio controlled with a myriad of other practical functions. This range of watches are designed for those with an active lifestyle that demand quality and accuracy from every part of their watch.

Perpetual calendars can most frequently be found in luxury watches as the mechanism needed to sustain this accuracy is extremely complex. But now there are a number of products available which can provide this useful and impressive feature at a fraction of the price you may have previously expected to pay. For example the Pulsar Perpetual Calendar watch is available from Find Watches for half its RRP at only £67.41 including shipping. We frequently get new perpetual calendar watches in, but those at this kind of price seem to fly off the shelves!