"In the flesh". GO '06 novelties, pt. 1: Senator calendar week

For me, the GO Senator "calendar week" was one of the few truly innovative watches shown on the Basel fair, even if it was not presented with a big event. Outside of Europe, the calendar week is not important, the more so in German-speaking coutnries, though. Over here, all trade business, project planning etc. is done with calendar weeks only. If you order something, you'll get the delivery date quoted as week number, for example.

Until now, only a few watches show the calendar week (Kelek, Breitling, Nivrel, M?hle, to name some that come into my mind, but all of them are based on a rather simple hand. Glash?tte Original developed a calendar week display based on its unique panorama date mechanism. If you think this is an easy task, you're wrong. More than 200 parts of the movement are necessary for the week display alone! The problem is to move the display from "52" or "53" to "01" within one night. So the second figure is jumping from 2 (or 3) to 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, to 1 finally. The energy consumed by these up to 10 steps would completely drain the mainspring. Therefore, a second spring barrel was installed, and the kinetic energy of the single steps once every week is used to wind the spring inside. At the end of the year, enough energy is stored and released to reset the display to "01". In order to control this release for a smooth and steady movement, a specific part invented for the PanoRetroGraph's chime mechanism is used here. No less than 71 jewelled bearings ensure the flawless operation of the movement.

I am sure that this unique complication will find many friends, even if the business culture of the places they reside in does not make extensive use of the calendar week number.

Mr. Loeffler, one of GO's watchmakers, explains to us the difficulties that had to be overcome for the calendar week display.

Regards,
Marcus