Number The Days

Patek Philippe and the art of perpetual calendars.

 

 

It’s been said that human beings are the only animals on Earth that obsess over the passing of time. Our fear of death has in a sense, spurred us to be mindful of the limited time we have and that mindfulness has been a catalyst of our progress as a species. As we evolved, so did the way we tell time.

The calendar saw constant change and updates until Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian Calendar in October 1582, that saw 365.25 as the average number of days in a year. His introduction of the leap year rounded down the year to 365 days, with every fourth year holding 366 days.

Since then, we’ve stuck to this manner of counting the days. It’s true, necessity is the mother of invention, and translating the process of counting the days to a timekeeping device was where watchmakers played an important role.

While Thomas Mudge, an English watchmaker, built the first known perpetual calendar pocket watch in 1762, it was the acclaimed Geneva-based watchmaker Patek Philippe that filed the patent for a perpetual calendar mechanism in 1889.