The birth of the annual Calendar

There is an obvious gap between a simple date and month feature and a perpetual calendar. This is where the annual calendar complication comes into play. Unlike the complex perpetual calendar, it doesn’t count leap years, and therefore a quick adjustment every year is necessary from February to March.

The first annual calendar watch in the world, however, only came out in 1996, released by none other than Patek Philippe. It was decades after the perpetual calendar’s debut. One of the most pertinent questions would be: Why did it take so long?

Put simply, it takes intelligence and experience to create a new complication. More importantly, it takes a true pioneer to blaze a new trail. Patek Philippe was the one who brought perpetual calendar mechanisms into wristwatches, and it made sense that they were the one to tweak it and create the annual calendar mechanism. If you think it’s just a matter of taking one feature off the mechanism to create this feature, think again.

The real story behind this breakthrough began four years earlier, in 1992 when Philippe Stern, the owner and president of Patek Philippe, demanded that his engineers develop the annual calendar. Since the watch needs to be adjusted every year, the mechanism was expected to be user-friendly—a requirement that sometimes takes a backseat in modern horology.

After two years of research and development, the team presented their results that led to the filing of a patent for the principles and mechanical designs.