Patek Philippe Caliber 89

I confess that I am not much into fashion, complements and luxury items, not even watches. I guess all the watches I have had in the last 20 years have been presents from my mother and I don’t remember specifically having asked for any of them.

“You never really own a Patek Philippe, you merely take care of it for the next generation”, this all I knew about Patek Philippe, because of seeing its advertisements in The Economist magazine.

When I visited Geneva some weeks ago, a friend living there suggested that we could visit the Patek Philippe Museum (10 CHF) as one of the activities for the weekend, and so we did.

In the museum you almost get exhausted with the so many luxurious watches and pieces of jewellery that you see, but some of them make it definitely worth the visit.

The Caliber 89 is a commemorative watch built to celebrate the 150 years of existence of the company. The small shrine displaying the watch and its features is breathtaking. It is said to be the most complicated watch ever built. You may see below the data about the watch provided by the museum.

Patek Philippe Caliber 89

Total development time 9 years: 5 years for research and development, and 4 years in manufacture.

• Total diameter 89 mm.
• Total thickness 41 mm
• Total weight 1100 grams
• Case 18 ct. Gold

Number of components 1728, including:

• 184 wheels
• 61 bridges
• 332 screws
• 415 pins
• 68 springs
• 429 mechanical parts
• 126 jewels
• 2 main dials
• 24 hands
• 8 display dials

Functions:

• Hours, minutes and seconds of sidereal time
• Time in a second time zone
• Time of sunset and sunrise
• Equation of time
• Tourbillon regulator
• Perpetual calendar
• Century leap year correction
• Date of the month
• Century, decade and year
• Day of the week
• Months
• Four-year cycle
• Sun hand (season, equinox, solstice, zodiac)
• Stars chart
• Age and phases of the moon
• Date of Easter
• Chronograph
• Split-seconds
• 30 minute recorder
• 12 hour recorder
• Grande Sonnerie with carillon
• Petite Sonnerie with carillon
• Minute-repeater
• Alarm
• Going train up-and-down indication
• Striking train up-and-down indication
• Striking train stop work
• Twin barrel differential winding
• Four-way setting system
• Winding-crown position indication

You may see below two videos explaining the watch and the process of building watches by Patek Philippe.

Finally, you may find this interesting post (in Spanish) about the Caliber 89, there I found the videos.