My Patek Philippe

Posted By HARRIS A S on February 26, 2010

Omega date and Longines date but dial says ‘CALENDAR’??

As we all know the first wrist-watch introduced was one with a mechanical winding and then came the semi-automatic winding (bumper automatic), followed by the full-swing winding rotor.

If I am not wrong here, the first watch with the date of the month at the 3 o’clock index was introduced by Rolex, some time in 1945. This particular watch was named Rolex Datejust. Possibly amongst others, then came the Omega with date and also, the Longines with date. Ironically, the initial models of Omega and Longines showing the date in a window were called ‘Omega Seamaster Calendar’ and ‘Omega Constellation Calendar’ while the Longines named theirs ‘Longines Conquest Calendar’. Best of all, a Patek Philippe watch says nothing at all on its dial, whether it comes with a date, a perpetual calendar or even, an automatic movement.

Till today, Rolex still maintains the word ‘Datejust’ for their watch with a date, while one showing the day of the week, as well, is named ‘Day-date’. A short while after the introduction of their ‘calendar’ models, Omega and Longines discarded the word ‘Calendar’ from their dials for virtually all of their subsequent models but never made any attempt to put the word ‘date’ on their dials.

Strange or not, I cannot understand the rationale of putting the word ‘Calendar’ for a watch with a date, since day, date and month = calendar. Was it deliberately done or was it an oversight by Omega and Longines, some while ago? I have been hunting for an answer from some of the watch forums but to no avail. Whatever, very likely collectors may one day decide to include these ‘Calendar’ Omega and ‘Calendar’ Longines watches in their collections.

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