Being used to the world of software, where only ignorant and amateurish systems don't handle the 400-year rule in the Gregorian calendar, it's eye-opening to find out that people are paying thousands of dollars for a time-keeping device that needs the date to be manually fixed five times a year.
> ... it's eye-opening to find out that people are paying thousands of dollars for a time-keeping device that needs the date to be manually fixed five times a year.
People used to wear gold as jewelry thousands of years ago. And some people still do just that. That behavior predates a great many currencies. For example I'm pretty confident people shall still wear gold as jewelry long after the EUR currency shall be dead.
Enter any jewelry store in the west now and they'll tell you: men buy jewelry too now. But it didn't use to be that way: typically a watch was the only jewelry a man was allowed to wear.
I've got a very nice japanese mechanical watch which shows day of the week, day of the month and power reserve in addition of the time. Got it for 300 EUR brand new at a "family sale".
When I'm wearing that watch there's some device responsible for the zombification of the west I can do without: my smartphone. Adjusting it manually once in a while doesn't seem that bad of a deal.
> Enter any jewelry store in the west now and they'll tell you: men buy jewelry too now. But it didn't use to be that way: typically a watch was the only jewelry a man was allowed to wear.
Historically speaking, this was only true in recent times (the last few hundred years). Visit a history museum and you'll find all sorts of jewellery and ornaments worn by men over time.
I suspect people who buy expensive watches aren't bothered by having to adjust them a few times a year, assuming they didn't buy those watches as investments.
I have a very cheap (~$10) mechanical pocket watch, and it's not all that accurate in keeping time. But to me, winding the watch and adjusting the time is part of the fun. Even more fun is watching the gears and listening to the ticks, and pulling out my pocket watch when my friends started looking at their smartwatches.
First off, not all Calendar complications are made the same. The standard Patek Phillipe Annual Calendar needs only one correction per year – from February 28 or 29 to March 1. The 'plain calendar' complication needs adjusting five times a year for months of less than 31 days, but the far more popular perpetual calendar requires no adjustment whatsoever.
Secondly, your argument is fairly analogous to having to tune a Violin when perfectly good Violin virtual instruments and samples exist, indistinguishable for the use-case in question. By framing the question like that you're kind of missing the point about Horology and owning mechanical trinkets for the sake of marvelling at their construction and innovation.
The article points out some mechanisms that account for that.
However, at that time scale, I have to wonder whether the mechanism can, or should, run for over a century without stopping, which would seem to imply running without being cleaned or serviced beyond a certain point.
There's still a big difference in the sound of an actual violin and a digital recreation. But both a mechanical and digital watch will display the same information.
