World records aren’t all about circumnavigating the globe, running the fastest marathon – nor do they stop at the man who ate the most patties in an hour, either. These groundbreaking feats of humanity happen within watches, too.
It’s time to revise your edition of world records for 2025, as Swiss watchmaker Vacheron Constantin rewrites the rulebook on just how much craftsmanship can go into a watch. Debuting Les Cabinotiers Solaria Ultra Grand Complication, this brand-new novelty plays host to 41 watchmaking complications. Let’s unpack this for a moment.
A complication is a feature on a watch that goes beyond telling the time, for instance, displaying the day, date, and the phases of the moon. But there are complications that will leave you scratching your head even further, such as perpetual calendars that keep you on time, even through leap years, or chiming mechanisms that ring on the hour like the eerie grandfather clock you can’t quite bring yourself to get rid of. There’s a whole library of functions that go beyond simply telling you that it’s 12:30 p.m., which, of course, means lunchtime.
Your average daily-wear watch might host a few complications, but consider highly complicated watches (meaning many complications) as the haute couture garments of watchmaking. That’s why the news of Vacheron Constantin’s latest efforts earns a spot in the hall of fame. Fitting a mammoth 41 complications into the scope of a circular tool on your wrist is a major achievement for the history books.
Dubbed the most complex wristwatch ever made, Vacheron Constantin’s latest flex, timed perfectly for their 270th anniversary, offers a one-of-a-kind artefact that represents eight years of research and development. Holding 13 patents – i.e. trademarks – it houses 1,521 components, with an entirely new engine inside the watch as well. And let it be known that creating a new engine – the movement, in watchmaking parlance – takes time enough as it is.
But here’s where it gets really funky. This new model presents three readings of time: civil, solar, and sidereal. Notebooks at the ready. Civil time is the legal time used throughout the world, presented in your typical way through central hour and minute hands, but with the addition of a second time zone, so you know when it’s appropriate to FaceTime your friend in Honolulu.
Solar time represents tropical time, where the Earth’s rotation around the Sun is elliptical, rather than circular. Given the axis at which the Earth rests (24 degrees to the plane of its orbit), the time it takes for the Sun to complete a full cycle varies throughout the year. Stick with us. This means that the difference between a solar day and the civil day of 24 hours varies from -16 to +14 minutes, depending on the time of year. It only aligns perfectly four times a year – yes, during the equinoxes and solstices. This differential is displayed on the counter at 6 o’clock, so you can be eternally reminded of just how mind-blowing science really is.
Lest we forget sidereal time, displayed on the reverse of the watch, where the minutes are shown on the periphery of the fixed sapphire crystal caseback and the hours are displayed on a rotating disc set beneath it. With a duration of 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds, one sidereal day is the time it takes for Earth to complete a full 360° rotation, using a fixed star in the celestial vault as a reference point. It quickly becomes apparent why they titled it a grand complication.
With this glossary of a watch, you can keep track of time for the next 122 years, follow the phases of the moon, listen to the passing of time with its chiming mechanisms, measure the tides, and know your time zones from A to Z. Not forgetting that aesthetically, it’s a marvel too, with nine different types of finishing.
Vacheron Constantin revolves around the ethos of “doing better if possible – and that is always possible.” Quite the contrary here: they’ve taken what seemed impossible and proved it works. Wait for the applause.
