Along with enjoying things technical from hardware and software to several of the sciences, I've been an avid collector of complicated wristwatches for some time.This particular watch, the Vacheron Constantin Tour de l'Ile, is the most complicated 'production' watch yet made.
This amazing piece comprises 834 hand made pieces, requiring over four years of research and development.
The complications of the watch, spread across two faces, include: minute repeater with sonnerie, tourbillon, power reserve indication, 2nd time zone, moonphase, age of the moon, Sonnerie level indication, Perpetual calendar, Day, Date, Month, Leap year, Equation of time, Sunrise, Sunset, and Celestial chart.
Only seven of these masterpieces have been produced, at a retail price of $1.5 million, though if you can find one you'll need to pony up perhaps another million on top of that.
I had the pleasure of handling one of these, truly an amazing work by gifted craftsmen, and likely the most complex mechanism in a small space ever made by human hands.
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OMFG! You could buy a bunch of nice houses for what that costs! Freakin awesome though.
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