Worn & Wound
H. Moser Introduces a Highly Complex Endeavour Limited Edition Combining Chinese and Gregorian Calendars
Moser’s latest, in a somewhat under the radar way, is easily one of the most ingenious technical achievements in watchmaking this year. The Endeavour Chinese Calendar Limited Edition expands on the principles of simplicity behind Moser’s excellent perpetual calendar by integrating a Chinese lunisolar calendar with a display for the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac and phases of the moon, along with a Gregorian calendar. It’s a dizzying amount of information to be combined, and is even more confounding when you consider that unlike the Gregorian calendar, the Chinese calendar doesn’t have any repeated cycles, which makes it impossible to create a true “perpetual” Chinese lunisolar calendar. The way H. Moser and their partners at Agenhor have gotten around this is impressive. The Chinese calendar is based on the cycles of the moon, which means that months have 29 or 30 days (it takes the moon 29.53 days to orbit the earth). A total of 12 lunar months means that a lunar year lasts approximately 354 days on average, which is about 11 days shorter than a solar year as observed by the Gregorian calendar. This is the first hurdle in combining the lunar and solar calendars into one mechanism, but it’s even more complex than that. In a calendar that only observes lunar cycles, the months need to shift to keep pace with the seasons, with each month starting around 11 days earlier in every new solar year. This means that every two to three years, a thirteenth month is a...
