Worlds Most Complicated Watch

PRESS RELEASE - COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE | For immediate release

36 complications, 25 of them visible, 1,483 components, a 1000-year calendar, a price tag of 2.7 million dollars, and 5 years’ work: what others have simply dreamed of, Franck Muller has made a reality !
Never has the Maison de Haute Horlogerie better deserved its name of “Master of Complications”, pulverising the record number of complications ever housed in a single wristwatch.

The challenge for the Master Watchmakers of Genthod was enormous: how to embed all the complications known to this day in a watch that was designed to be worn. The Aeternitas movement served as a base, while the Mega 4 represents the apotheosis of the art of watchmaking with its grand and small Westminster chime striking-work, the only one available on the market with a tourbillon visible on the dial. Added to this are a minute repeater, a mono-pushpiece split-seconds chronograph, a perpetual calendar secular, and an equation of time which only varies by 6.8 seconds per lunar month, the equivalent of one day every thousand years!

Although the first piece of this exceptional, limited series was presented to an American collector at a ceremony in Monaco last November, the Master Watchmakers of Genthod are already putting the finishing touches to a second Aeternitas Mega 4, which will be available in the very near future.

I suspect Franck ripped off Daniel "The Mink" Minkowitz Renato design we discussed last week. This watch is hideous, unreadable and excessive - simply because they can do it.
I say this in the best possible way: The designer should be shot...with a silver bullet.

Yeah being complicated for the sake of being COMPLICATED is mundane...

Aside from the visible tourbillon it has I believe it has everything the JLC Hybris Mechanica 55 has. Not sure, though. Both of these watches have so many complications it will take a spreadsheet to figure it all out.

I think the JLC Hybris Mechanica much better looking IMHO.

Thanks for the post Dan.

36 complications ! ..The achievements of the watch are impressive !
However, the price is what really takes this one down a few notches !
Not to mention it's a tad bit busy to read. It seems like maybe this one
would not even be worn anyway. Maybe it would just be in a museum
or a glass case in someones collection !

boscoe wrote:

I suspect Franck ripped off Daniel "The Mink" Minkowitz Renato design we discussed last week. This watch is hideous, unreadable and excessive - simply because they can do it.
I say this in the best possible way: The designer should be shot...with a silver bullet.

Does that mean that they hired THAT man from Zenith?

I'll stick to my one complication, a second hand.

Technologically impressive beyond belief.
Functionally useless.

I hope it is set before the sale and fully wound from completion to delivery.
I think that if this overdone machine ever winds down it will take a team from MIT to reset it.

It will probably get tons of compliments though!!

foghorn wrote:

Functionally useless.
It will probably get tons of compliments though!!

1) I agree and 2) why?

falcon4311 wrote:

foghorn wrote:

Functionally useless.
It will probably get tons of compliments though!!

1) I agree and 2) why?

It was a dig,son, a dig!!


Don't you pay attention to the big picture??

Amazing watch but not for the general public! I really feel it's getting to the point that these fine swiss watchmakers are almost having a contest to see who has the biggest johnson! They are all trying to out do each other without the thought of what the customer wants and can afford! They really dont care if they sell and only build a few of these pieces, it really has nothing to do with the real watch world, just a few guys with real big ego's trying to out shine each other!