A basic principle in mechanical engineering is that in general, the most intelligent solution to any mechanical problem is the one that uses the simplest possible design. Despite this the tendency in watchmaking is for manufacturers to boast of the number of parts to be found in a watch. While this doesn't imply in and of itself that any maker is actually saying more complicated equals better, that's the conclusion we often instinctively draw. Dr. Ludwig Oeschlin, however, has tended to go in exactly the opposite direction in his work with Ochs und Junior, and has made a specialty of making complicated watches that use an absolute minimum of parts, in combination with novel solutions to the display of information that make it possible to achieve that reduction. His most recent achievement is the new Perpetual Calendar from Ochs und Junior, which implements a full perpetual calendar in a watch with only nine additional parts.
Just as with the Annual Calendar, the date is read off the outer ring of 31 dots. Each hour marker contains five dots, allowing you to rapidly read the date. The month is indicated by the orange dot on the smaller, inner month disk; the little white dot milled into the upper right surface of the dial represents January, and each subsequent month, the orange dot on the month disk jumps ahead half the distance between dial markers, for a total of 12 months. The leap year is shown by the position of the orange dot on the month disk; when it's pointing directly outward, it's a leap year.
The mechanism is, as we've already mentioned, drastically simplified from a tradition perpetual calendar, which can add as many as 180 or more parts (Patek's perpetual calendar plate in the reference 5204 split seconds perpetual calendar adds a total of 182 additional components).
Below you can see the entire assembly of the perpetual calendar mechanism, by Ochs und Junior watchmaker Sandra Flück. The base caliber is the Ulysse Nardin UN 118, used under an agreement we first wrote about in 2012.
There are a number of ways, obviously, in which the Ochs und Junior perpetual is different from a perpetual calendar. One of the most significant is that there's no program wheel. Normally a perpetual calendar uses a notched wheel (classically, with 48 notches for each month of a four-year perpetual calendar cycle). The depth of each notch corresponds to the length of a month, and the beak of a lever that falls into the notch determines when the calendar indication will switch, and how many days it skips. Oechslin's basic insight, which goes all the way back to his work on the Ulysse Nardin Perpetual GMT +/-, was that there was a way to control the date switching using a series of gears with varying tooth construction, stacked like the layers of a cake. In addition to dramatically simplifying a perpetual calendar mechanically, the fact that gears were used, instead of the lever-and-program wheel system, meant that for the first time, you could adjust a perpetual calendar not only by the crown alone, but also forwards and backwards. Below you can see Dr. Oechslin explain the advantages of using a gearing system (click "CC" in the video below for subtitles).
The really dramatic simplification of both Ochs und Junior's perpetual calendar, however, meant taking the next step in redefining the concept of a perpetual calendar. The easiest way to understand it is to imagine yourself asking a hypothetical question: what if the perpetual calendar mechanism itself was also the indication of the date, month, and year? As with the Ochs und Junior annual calendar, the indications are actually part of the mechanism itself – a step only made possible by coming up with a design concept for the display that allows the position of the perpetual calendar mechanism to also serve, in a legible and intuitive fashion, as the indicating system.
The mechanism for setting the date and time is extremely straightforward, just as you might expect from a watch with such an economy of means in its mechanics. From winding the watch fully to setting the date correctly, is a process that takes a surprisingly short amount of time. The video below shows the entire process in real time and is exactly 59 seconds long.
This kind of watchmaking in many respects runs, as Ochs und Junior does in general, counter to a lot of trends in modern watchmaking. There are few if any displays of what connoisseurs have come to think of as traditional craft. Though working surfaces are meticulously cleanly finished, the display of hand-finishing is clearly not what this watch is about. Instead, its appeal is much more intellectual: to understand it means understanding what a perpetual calendar does, first of all, and then understanding how the traditional solution addresses the challenge of coping with the four-year Leap Year cycle of the Gregorian calendar.
For much of its existence the mechanical perpetual calendar has been a rarity, largely due to the challenges involved in making a traditional perpetual calendar mechanism. The program wheel and the lever system that drives the various indications required the use of steel jumper springs, all of which had to be tempered individually and had to have carefully calculated strengths in order for the mechanism to work properly. Though such mechanisms achieved something rather miraculous – encoding the vagaries of the Gregorian calendar, which in turn encodes the irrational (I use the term in its mathematical sense) ratios of planetary orbital mechanics, they were also in many ways impractical from a user standpoint – easy to damage, impossible to set backwards if accidentally set too far forward, and so on. In re-thinking the traditional system purely in terms of gearing, and then going one step further and integrating the mechanical system with the display, Dr. Oechslin has, yes, made a much more practical perpetual calendar. But it's also one that has what physicists and mathematicians like to call elegance – a simplicity that's based on a deep understanding of fundamental principles.
As with all Ochs und Junior watches, it's available by order directly from Ochs und Junior in Lucerne only. The watch is 42 mm overall with a grade-5 titanium case, platinum hands, rhodium dial markers and of course, the signature orange dots. Price excluding VAT is CHF 20,240 – and as is the norm with Ochs und Junior, the watch is highly customizable. Order here, and for a full breakdown of the functioning and design of the watch, including a lot of very informative videos, visit Ochs und Junior online.
Read our coverage of the most recent Ochs und Junior Annual Calendar, the Annual Calendar Light, here.
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