Swiss masters from the Les Cabinotiers department of the Vacheron Constantin company have once again succeeded in rewriting the rules when it comes to watchmaking. Their latest masterpiece is the Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers Solaria Ultra Grand Complication, the most complicated wristwatch ever made. It took them eight years to create this watch with 41 complications, five rare astronomical functions, and an innovative Westminster minute repeater. As the manufacturer states on its official website, its mechanism runs on calibre 3655, a marvel of micromechanics with 1.521 components.
Jewels and power reserve
The watch measures 45 mm with a thickness of 14.99 mm. The entire mechanism, calibre 3655, measures only 36 mm in diameter and 10.96 mm in thickness and includes everything from 14 complications to five chime complications, including a split-seconds chronograph which is also one of the complications. With 1.521 components and 204 jewels, the watch runs at 3 Hz with a 72-hour power reserve and is made of white gold.
This is also the first watch to offer time tracking of celestial objects. Standard timekeeping, two time zones, world time, perpetual calendar, moon phases, tide indicator, sun position (including sunrise and sunset, duration of daylight, height of the sun above the horizon, and declination angle), astrological signs, celestial body time tracking, minute repeater with Westminster chimes, chronograph, split-seconds chronograph, and power reserve indicator are just some of the functions of the watch that elevate engineering perfection to a new level.
It uses four hammers and four gongs to produce a melody that mimics the sound of the famous Westminster chime, from which it gets its name. Its construction includes seven individual patents, out of a total of 13 patents it contains.
Back of the watch
What distinguishes this watch and places it at the very top of horological innovation is the ability to track celestial objects over time, allowing you to calculate how long until a celestial object, a star for example, becomes visible to the naked eye.
It operates using a split-second chronograph on the back of the watch, in combination with a sapphire star diagram.
Here is how this is achieved – stop the first chronograph hand in the center of the field of vision, marked by a green marker on the celestial map, then stop the second hand over the object you want to track – say the Orion constellation. The green indicator on the back of the first hand then points to a 24-hour scale connected to the second hand, and based on that you get how many hours it will take for that object to enter the center of your field of vision.
This unique piece does not yet have a published price, but there is no doubt it will be astronomical, Forbes writes.
