In 1989, Patek Philippe, the Swiss manufacturer of some of the world’s most desired watches, created the Calibre 89 in honor of the company’s 150th anniversary. This watch is the most sophisticated mechanical timepiece ever created, and remains a milestone in the history of horology.
In addition to the standard hour-minute-second functions, the Calibre 89 boasts 33 more functions in its double-faced case. There are four different gongs which replicate the sounds of London’s Big Ben. There are 24 hands which function as a split-time chronograph, a perpetual calendar, a leap-year indicator, an Easter calculator, weekday markings, lunar phase and night sky depictions, sidereal time, time of sunset and sunrise, a second time-zone indicator, position of the sun in the zodiac, and even a thermometer. The accuracy of the watch is assisted by a tourbillon, a tiny gyroscope-like device which turns about every minute to help correct for the effects of gravity on the mechanism.
The watch is comprised of 1728 parts and, because it is hand-tooled and -assembled, it took nearly nine years to manufacture and build the four production units. One is in platinum, and one each is made of white gold, yellow gold and rose gold. At a price of US$2.7 million, it is the most expensive watch ever made.
It is also a true folly. While it is a triumph of the science of watchmaking, at nearly 3 pounds, the Calibre 89 is possibly the most impractical pocketwatch ever created. Designed for the pocket, it is too big to be carried there, but the features of the face are too small for it to be used as a desk or wall clock. It works as a monument to engineering, as an example of what can be done, but it fails miserably as a timepiece because it is too complicated to use for the simple purpose of determining whether you’re going to be on time for work.
While I am truly amazed and impressed by the effort and craftsmanship and painstaking care that went into the manufacture of the Calibre 89, I am totally unimpressed by its utility. Looking at this image, I can’t tell for sure whether it is 10:10 or 8:10 (hollow circle hands in pairs) or 10:50 or 1:50 (one solid black circle hand and one hollow circle hand) or 10:41 or 1:41 (one solid black circle hand and the other hollow circle hand.)
Perhaps the true nature of this watch is expressed in the terminology used to explain it. A watch which simply tells the hour, minute, and seconds of the day is known as a “simple” watch. Every function beyond the basics is known as a “complication.” The Calibre 89 has 33 complications, more than any watch ever made.
The person buying this watch is probably not going to keep it in his or her pocket. He or she is buying it for its uniqueness, its beauty, its historical value, its place as an exemplar of Swiss watchmaking. Because of this, the buyer is not disappointed in its lack of utility. To ensure she is on time to pick up her child from childcare, she wears a digital watch which she picked up at BJs for $8.99 when the strap on her last cheapo watch broke and she realized it would be cheaper to buy a new watch than to buy a new wristband for the old one.
Unfortunately, this is not the case with software. I’m composing this little article in Microsoft Word XP, the 10th version of the software for the Windows platform. Without leaving this program, I can create mailing lists, multi-column newsletters, spreadsheets, HTML and XML documents, drawings, e-mail, letterhead, diagrams and fully-hyperlinked and annotated legal briefs and pleadings. Someone with more programming skills than me can modify the basic operations of the program, altering its interface and functionality, perhaps automating some of the procedures I currently use.
All this “functionality” is excess baggage to me when all I want to do is write a little text. Yet, year after year, I’m suckered in by press releases, magazine reviews, e-mailings and glossy brochures urging me to upgrade to the next “feature-packed” release of MS Word.
Perhaps watchmaking terminology could be applied to software. Perhaps, instead of describing the new “features” of a word-processing program, we would hear about the new “complications” in Word. How much would you pay to complicate your work?
