THE CONVERSATION: APROPOS COMPLICATIONS

A watch with complications appeals to different sorts of collectors, and is quite different to a complex watch. The editors of Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand discuss the virtues of all sorts of complications and consider when more is really better...

- ASHOK SOMAN, DANIEL GOH AND RUCKDEE CHOTJINDA

In the pages of magazines like this one and across the spread of worldwide webpages of horological content, you will often find traditional mechanical timekeepers described as complicated. Social media compounds this, with one-liners calling watches “complex,” or “complicated,” or full of “complications,” with no further explanation. In fact, some watches are not only complex in terms of number of components – from the case and movement to the dial and bracelet – but also come with a number of complications. Funnily enough, this is just the traditional watchmaking world’s way of saying that a watch has functions other than tracking the hours, minutes and seconds. In other words, the smart watch is the world’s most complicated timekeeper. Indeed, it has so many non-horological functions that it is truly a wearable computer rather than a watch. One might say the word “smart,” in a smart watch tells us what it is. This begs the question: what is a complicated watch?

Returning to the mechanical wristwatch, when a pundit somewhere says a watch is complicated, he or she is not saying it was difficult to design and build, or even to understand. Indeed, the word “complicated,” is a loose colloquial term in watchmaking – a more specific word is “complication.” As noted, a watch with complications is one with functions beyond regular timekeeping but still related to tracking time in some way. Yes, the date and a second time zone count, but a tourbillon and remontoir do not, although these do add complexity to any given watch. Both are counted as technical complications, as are extended power reserves and ultra-thin architectures.