The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I was reading the technical data about the Aerospace Watch on Breitling.com and it said under calender that the day and date were programmed for 4 years. So after 4 years, what happens? Can you get it reprogrammed?

Thanks,
cRaSiAn1030

Yes. Its just telling you that programming is only needed every 4 years.

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-RJ

Just to be clear, every leap year, you will have to manually correct the date.

I got mine in the summer last year, so wait until Feb 29, 2012 and I'll report back what I had to do.

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There are three kinds of people in this world; those that can count and those that can't.

1 - Aerospace blue dial
2 - ?

Leap years cannot be programmed easily. There is a leap year every four years, but not if it is a even 100 year. But then again; it is leap year if it is an even 400 years. There was leap years at 1996, 2000 and 2004, but at the turn of next century there will be leap years 2096 and then 2104 (common year 2100)

This cannot easily be "programmed" into a mechanical clock and my guess is that it is not worth doing it in a digital. So they go with the easier algorithm; there are no leap years (actually 28:th of Feb always is followed by 1:st of March).

So every time there is a 29:th of February (always a Tuesday for century leap years) your Aerospace will display 1:st of March and you need to correct it (twice).

Hope I got it right, it's easier to express in program code

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Segal's law — "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."

Mechanical perpetual watches ignore the 100 year rule - they alwasy assume that every 4th year has a February 29th.

Incidentally, February 29th 2008 was a Friday!

Corrected (only goes for CLYs of course)

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Segal's law — "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."

Just checked up the words that was used on the Breitling web. It says:

Calendar: Digital, day and date programmed for 4 years

Maybe they mean: programmed for 4 years rule, but not 100 and 400 years rule? and the Aerospace actually does keep track of the 29:th?

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Segal's law — "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."

It doesn't.

I'm sure you're right, but it makes very little sense imo. It should be much simpler doing more advanced algorithms with electronics than with mechanics. Otherwise we would celebrate Charles Babbage rather than Alan Turing

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Segal's law — "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."

Probably easier, but keep in mind that swiss perpetuals start at ~$25k.

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-RJ

Also remember that Breitling aren't trying to make every watch the same.

Is it relatively easy to make every quartz watch a perpetual minute repeater - sure, but they won't do it because they are trying to differentiate their models.

What Breitling models are automatic perpetuals?

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Current collection: Breitling Superocean Heritage I 46, Rolex Submariner, Swatch X ****** Sistem51

Currently only the Bentley Mark VI Complications 29.

Of the recent models there has also been the Mulliner Perpetual and several LE Navitimers.