Perpetual Calendars and Chronographs

There is something magical about the idea of a small mechanical machine that can foretell the future, which is, after all, what the perpetual calendar does: informing its wearer of the day, date, and state of the moon, taking into account the untidiness of the Gregorian calendar with its months of varying length and its clumsy quadrennial adjustment of the addition of a day to the month of February. 

Perpetual calendars have been associated with Patek Philippe since the early days of the firm; in 1889 Adrien Philippe’s flair for mechanical invention in this field was recognized with a patent (Brevet Suisse 1018) protecting the design of Patek Philippe’s perpetual calendar mechanism and Patek Philippe can be said to have invented the perpetual calendar wristwatch with the Ref.  97975.

It was with this invention that Patek Philippe began laying the foundations upon which it built its unassailable position as the master of the complicated wristwatch.  At Patek Philippe, the "specialité de la maison" is to combine this function with the chronograph.  The bloodline of these watches begins back in the 1930s with the Ref. 1518, of which the Oak Collection has a beautiful example on a Gay Frères bracelet.