Display complication
What is a retrograde watch?
A hand that moves along an arc instead of a full circle and then snaps back to the start.
How it works
A retrograde hand travels across a fan-shaped scale, for the date, the day, the seconds or the minutes, and at the end of the scale it flies back to zero in an instant. The hand is driven by a cam shaped like a snail and returned by a spring.
It's mostly a design flourish: it lets the dial use a semicircle instead of a full subdial, and the snap back is satisfying to watch.
History
Retrograde displays appeared in 18th-century pocket watches and became a signature of brands like Breguet. Many modern watches use a retrograde date on an otherwise simple dial.
Before you buy
Avoid setting a retrograde date backwards unless the maker says you can, and don't change it near midnight.
Questions
- What does retrograde mean on a watch?
- That a hand moves across an arc and then jumps back to its start, rather than going all the way around the dial.