Would you feel comfortable carrying around a timepiece that was almost 10 cm in diameter, 5 cm thick and weighed nearly a kilo? It is probably about as likely as you having the estimated price of this piece (7-10 million dollars) lying around in spare change.
The Vacheron Constantin Reference 57260 (57 for the complications and 260 for the age of the company) was launched at a very select gathering in Geneva and under tight controls (watch the video), given that this is a timepiece that has been commissioned at great expense by one of the world’s foremost collectors of pocket watches. It can sometimes be difficult to write about a watch that you haven’t seen, but when that watch is the most complicated timepiece ever made, the task gets even harder. The official press release accompanying the piece totals eight pages and refers to a “level of mathematical understanding and craftsmanship that is almost beyond comprehension”. “Almost” being the operative word, because a team of three master watchmakers nevertheless managed to make it, even if it took them eight years to do so.
Given the uniqueness of this piece and the fact that it is a private commission, it seems unkind for the 260 year-old brand to refer to “the user” in the perplexing documentation that attempts to explain the 57 complications that have been crammed into this bulging pocket watch. After all, this is a very personal piece, many of whose complications are no doubt a result of the customer’s personal wishes. The Hebraic perpetual calendar is probably the most obvious example, but the star chart for his precise location and the separate ISO 8601 calendar used in international business and finance are clearly others.
The double retrograde split-seconds chronograph is interesting from a purely horological point of view, since it is the first time such a complication has been presented in a watch. In this interpretation, the split seconds genuinely are split, since the two retrograde chronograph hands never meet. The 12-hour second time zone indicator with a separate day and night indicator is another new innovation. The 57 complications also include the more familiar equation of time display, a standard perpetual calendar and grande and petite sonneries, as well as a handy built-in silencer that automatically deactivates the chimes between 10pm at night and 8am in the morning.
To ensure excellent precision, a tri-axial tourbillon with a spherical hairspring beats at the heart of the manually-wound calibre 3750 movement, revealing the familiar Maltese Cross of Vacheron Constantin every 15 seconds in the aperture at 6 o’clock. Among the 2,800 movement components in this 72mm diameter mechanical colossus, there are no less than 242 jewels, but to take things to their logical conclusion, the lever pallets are not rubies but diamonds. With 19 hands on the front and 12 on the back, legibility – even with a massive 98mm case diameter – is an issue, which is why the world’s most complicated watch is supplied with a magnifying glass.
Weighing in at a staggering 960 grammes, it is the equivalent of carrying around more than five iPhone 6 plus telephones or 3 iPad Minis in your pocket (if you’ll forgive the terribly 21st century analogy) – assuming that your pocket is big enough to accommodate a watch that is roughly the size of a coffee cup. But it’s still not the world’s heaviest watch, since Patek Philippe’s Calibre 89, which was the world’s previous most complicated watch, which weighs 1.1 kilo.
