In 2008, the watchmakers in Le Brassus paid tribute to the first Perpetual Calendar by creating a platinum limited series to mark its 30th anniversary. Today, the Jules Audemars Perpetual Calendar is making its grand entrance into the collection with an 18-carat pink gold case, teamed according to personal preference with a brown or silvered dial. The latter features a satin-brushed sunburst finish and refined pink gold hour-markers. Its case echoes the identity codes developed in 2008 with a particularly slender bezel designed to highlight the dial.

The perpetual calendar mechanism admirably reproduces the specific features of our Gregorian calendar, taking into account the irregular lengths of the 30- and 31-day months by means of a cam – itself connected to a wheel – bearing the different monthly durations. Another wheel on the same axis, which carries a cam indicating a normal month of February and a leap-year February, performs one full revolution in four years and thus enables the watch to keep track of the leap-year cycle. This means the Jules Audemars Perpetual Calendar will not require any correction until March 1st 2100. All that will be required on this date is to activate the correctors placed on the side of the case, and the mechanism will be duly readjusted for another century. This module, built on the extra-thin self-winding Calibre 2120 base movement, was and still is – after successive enhancements – an impressive technical accomplishment and a prodigious feat of miniaturisation.