LEAPS AND BOUNDS

The quest to add one day to a month every four years may seem like a mundane task in the digital age, but achieving this mechanically is anything but.

- DANIEL GOH

How often do you think about a leap year? The seemingly innocuous phenomenon that happens once every four years, adding a single day to February. For most of the world's population it is probably just "oh, there is a February 29th this year" as they see the date on the screen of a smartphone, smartwatch or Google calendar. But, for us watch enthusiasts, on the other hand, February 29th is the day when we finally get to see the perpetual calendar complication go to work. The day when your mechanically driven timepiece can intuitively understand that in 2024, February doesn't end on the 28th and therefore can automatically compensate for the extra day, and subsequently the arrival of March.

Put to a non-watch person, it may seem that all the research and development and investment from the brand side, along with the hefty asking price of a perpetual calendar, to see it in action once every 1,460 days is probably not justified. However, this is the reason you buy a perpetual calendar. Not an annual calendar or a complete calendar, which is comparatively much cheaper. You buy a perpetual calendar so you can set it once, and if continuously powered, will keep the date until 2100 whereby many of us reading this would no longer be alive.