A guide to 7 of the most common watch complications

Borna Bošnjak

Being fully aware of stating the obvious, watches are there to tell the time, right? So, there’s practically no need for a watch to have anything else but three hands. You’ve got the hours, minutes, and seconds – and the rest you can hopefully figure out by way of the human experience. It’s not so simple of course, and watch complications can provide many useful tidbits of information at a glance, and while they may not be as crucial to everyday life as they were, say, a century ago, watch fans still gravitate towards them.

But what even constitutes a complication, and is there a need for anything more complicated than a day and/or date? I’ll use the aforementioned assumption that anything more involved than three hands is a “complication”, though staying aware that designing a date versus a tourbillon is not quite the same. With that in mind, here’s a short overview of what some of the most common watch complications are and what they’re used for. As for whether we need them, I leave that up to you.

Date

Let’s start with the date, a feature that’s present on so many watches some many not even consider it to be a complication. The idea behind it is simple – by way of an aperture in the dial, your watch will tell you what date it is. You’ll usually find these situated at 3 or 6 o’clock, with some watches placing them in the controversial 04:30 position that some watch enthusiast are not overly fond of due to its asymmetry. Not all date complications are the same, as some are programmed to instantaneously flip at midnight, while others creep over to the next day slowly over the course of a few hours. These days, you should have no trouble finding a watch that allows you to interact with the date via the crown – a feature commonly referred to as a “quickset” date – though that’s not guaranteed with vintage watches.

Only stepping the complication level up slightly, some watches also display the day of the week. This is usually found at 3 o’clock right next to the date aperture written in shorthand, but some watches like the Hamilton Khaki King and Rolex Day-Date display the day of the week in full at 12 o’clock.

The pointer date is an alternative way of displaying the complication, where a watch uses a centrally mounted hand to indicate the date around the periphery of the dial. This is normally reserved for vintage-inspired watches like the aptly named Oris Pointer Date, or for those wishing to preserve the symmetry of the dial by skipping on the usual aperture.

Watchmakers have, of course, figured out a way to complicate things further, even with something as seemingly simple as a date display. Most famously used by German brands A. Lange & Söhne and Glashütte Original, the “big date” is exactly what it sounds like – a date complication made larger. You’ll also hear terms like “grande date” and “Panorama date” (used specifically by GO) describing what is essentially the same formula. Rather than just a single disc underneath the dial, big dates use two discs placed next to each other, or a system of overlapping ones when space is at a premium.

Chronograph

The chronograph is the first complication I think of when the term comes to mind, and its history is long, dating back to the 19th century. Humans have always needed to time things accurately, and while we may not use chronographs for astronomical calculations or lap timing anymore, the charm is still there. The basic chronograph functionality works something like this: you have a large, central chronograph hand that begins to count the seconds at the push of a button, with smaller sub-registers counting the minutes and hours. Press the same pusher again, the chronograph stops, and from there you can resume it by pressing it again, or reseting with a different pusher. Chronograph complications are often paired with tachymeter scales (like the Nivada Grenchen above), as it’s an easy way to calculate average speed over a known distance. You can also find them combined with pulsometer scales, allowing you to easily read someone’s heart rate.

The flyback chronograph is works in pretty much the exact same way as your bog-standard one, with one key difference. Should you wish to start timing something from zero, you don’t have to stop and reset the chronograph. Instead, just depress the flyback pusher, and the chrono hands will fly back (hence the name) to their starting position, continuing their timing duties without interruption.

The aforementioned types of chronographs are actually quite “modern”, as this is not how they originally began to appear in wristwatches. Until Breitling’s 1933 invention, chronographs relied on a single button to operate the function, meaning that you could not continue timing whatever it was you’re timing if you had already stopped the chronograph. Though they’re rare today, monopusher (or monopoussoir) chronographs do exist, and you’ll sometimes find all of their functions controlled by a single crown, like in the Cartier Tortue Monopoussoir.

As usual, it gets more complicated than that. What if you wanted to read off a particular time you were keeping track of, but also needed to continue timing the event? A usual example is with timing laps on a racetrack. That’s where a split-seconds or rattrapante chronograph comes in. A rattrapante chronograph has two central seconds hands superimposed, and by pressing the appropriate pusher, one will stop in place, allowing you to read the time, while the other continues. When you’re done with recording the elapsed time, push the same pusher again, and the arrested hand snaps back to the currently running one, and keeps ticking along.

Calendars

A calendar is an expansion on the idea of showcasing a date on the dial, just in case you needed reminding of the month, and sometimes year, too. The simplest form of a calendar watch is usually referred to as a “triple” or “complete” calendar, referring to the fact it displays the day, date, and month, while sometimes also including a moonphase (more on that below). Much like the majority of watches with a date, a complete calendar will not keep track of months shorter than 31 days, meaning you’ll have to manually advance the movement using the crown or hidden correctors in the caseband.

There are, of course, watches that do keep track of these calendar irregularities. If you wanted to rid yourself of such inconveniences, but still wanted to keep some money in your wallet, you should consider an annual calendar. Usually offering the same amount of information as a complete calendar, annual calendars are able to keep track of the numbers of days in a month, with the exception being pesky February. This complication was introduced by Patek Philippe in 1996, relatively recently compared to many others on this list, as a more cost-effective alternative to the perpetual calendar.

If I’ve done a good enough job of explaining, you’d have guessed that a perpetual calendar can keep track of all calendar irregularities, including the 28 or 29 days of February – and you’d be correct, for the most part. The perpetual calendar, like the chronograph, is a historic complication, with the earliest examples dating back to 1762, though it’s only been in wristwatches for around a century. While perpetual calendar movements can keep track of leap years (which they’ll also often display on the dial), they do not account for an oft-forgotten quirk of the Gregorian calendar. Apart from the four-year cycle of leap years, there is also a 400-year cycle that means every century not divisible by 400 is not a leap year. That’s why you’ll notice all perpetual calendars say they’ll be accurate until the year 2100 which happens to not be a leap year, as it’s not divisible by 400.

But of course, watchmaking masterminds have accounted for this too – that’s becoming a bit of a theme now, isn’t it? So-called “secular” calendars do have the necessary modification to the usual perpetual calendar mechanism that allows them to keep track of the additional complicated cycle. While perpetual calendars aren’t super common, they’re plentiful compared to the number of brands that have attempted to produce a secular calendar, with even fewer producing them in non-limited numbers. Notable examples include the recent IWC Eternal Calendar and the Renaud and Tixier-developed module, with Svend Andersen, Franck Muller, Vacheron Constantin, and Patek Philippe on the shortlist, too.

Multiple time zones

Some watches ramp up their utility by adding an extra hour hand to the dial, allowing you to track multiple time zones at the same time. There are numerous ways to do this – from using two completely independent movements to ultra-complicated examples that let you track daylight saving too. Most often, however, a dual time watch will have an separate central hour hand or sub-dial that will track the additional time zone. Depending on the watch, the secondary time zone hour hand can rotate around the dial in 12 or 24 hours. In case of the former, the watch may have some way to indicate whether it’s AM or PM, like the Vacheron Constantin Overseas Dual Time above. With a 24-hour hand, the watch will usually have a corresponding scale on the dial for easy reference.

Arguably one of the more useful complications these days is the GMT, getting its name from the Greenwich Mean Time time zone used as the starting point for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). While the word is often used interchangeably for a dual time watch, Rolex popularised the term “GMT” with the introduction of the GMT-Master 6542 and its iconic blue and red bezel in 1954. It’s this rotating bezel that steps up the utility from a simple dual time watch, as it allows for potential tracking of a third time zone, or simply quick adjustments without needing to interact with the movement. Speaking of GMT movements, you might’ve heard watch fans differentiate between “caller” and “flyer” or “traveller” GMTs, which basically refers to which hand can be adjusted quickly – Jamie dove into the subject in a lot more detail.

If tracking the time in just one other location just isn’t enough, you should probably look for a worldtimer of some sort. Recognisable by having a printed ring of city names around the dial perimeter, worldtimers allow the wearer to quickly check the time in any of those cities by quickly referring to a scale on the dial. In the case of the Aqua Terra Worldtimer above, all you need to do is align a city that corresponds to the time zone you’re currently in with the correct time on the inner 24-hour scale, and you’re set!

Moonphase

I briefly mentioned moonphases when talking about calendar watches, though they can also be found serparate from a calendar complication. The complication is again quite self-explanatory, as it merely shows the current phase of the moon, and is one of the most simple astronomic complications. Most moonphases will use a 59-tooth wheel that shows a 29.5-day progression of the phases, though the rounding error will result in a discrepancy of around one day every three months, meaning you’ll need to reset it. Naturally, more accurate moonphase watches exist – once again, the honourable mention goes to the IWC Eternal Calendar and its record-setting 45 million-year moonphase display.

Tourbillon

While it’s no longer limited to appearing in haute horlogerie dreams, the tourbillon is still inextricably linked with high watchmaking. Devised by Breguet, a tourbillon continuously rotates the watch’s escapement as a way of combating the gravitational pull exerted onto balance springs. My gross oversimplification of the intricacies of tourbillons aside, it is one of the three complications most often associated with high-end watchmaking, alongside perpetual calendars and minute repeaters.

Striking and chiming complications

That was a neat segue, wasn’t it? Before we get into minute repeaters, let’s take a brief look at other, simpler ways watches can be noisy. The complication perhaps best described by “noisy” would be an alarm, where a mechanical “rocker” would audibly vibrate the watch at a desired time. One of the more famous watches to use this function was the Vulcain Cricket. To set its alarm function, you’d align the long arrow hand (not too dissimilar from the previously mentioned pointer dates) to a time around the perimeter of the dial, and make sure the separate barrel that powers the complication was wound. As the hour hand aligned with the alarm hand, the mechanism would release the wound spring, and the rocker would vibrate, kind of like your iPhone in the morning.

While the Vulcain Cricket was a useful invention before alarm clocks became a thing, other, more melodic, chiming complications were always more about the artistry than utility. A striking time (or sonnerie au passage) watch, for example, is a miniaturisation of a clock tower, and chimes the time as it passes. Simpler movements like the one in the Christopher Ward Bel Canto pipe up only at the top of every hour, while A. Lange & Söhne’s Zeitwerk Striking Time also chimes the quarters.

But what if you couldn’t wait for even 15 minutes to pass to know the time without looking at it? That’s where minute repeater watches come in, allowing the wearer to hear the time on-demand by activating a slider or pusher on the case. Most repeater watches feature two hammers and gongs (seen in the upper left of this L.U.C Striking Time Sapphire), chiming the minutes with a low tone, the quarters with a double tone, and the hours with a high tone.