Longines’s Master Collection Retrograde has an exclusive movement with no less than four retrograde functions. A watch which directed the specialists at ETA to create one.

For its part, ETA welcomed the challenge, using as its canvas the Valgranges line of calibers, descendants of the classic Valjoux 7750, which are known for their large size and reliable rate performance. The results were not one but two reliable, user-friendly and, above all, high-performance calibers, each of which uses the traditional cam-and-rack construction.

This Longines Master Collection Retrograde watch has retrograde displays for the date, the day of the week, the time in a second time zone and the continually running seconds hand at 6 o’clock; it leaves out the seconds hand and replaces it with a power-reserve display at the same position.  The first surprise comes when you extract the crown to its middle position to set the time: the hand on the seconds display continues to run, but the hands on the three other retrograde displays abandon their previous positions and move clockwise into a sort of waiting position. A Teflon-coated guide ring ensures that the racks fall onto the cams and thus disengage simultaneously. When they’re in this position, the hour hand can be set in hourly increments without stopping the seconds hand or influencing the position of the minute hand. If you need to reset the minute hand, pull the crown out all the way and turn it. In this position, the seconds hand stays stopped where it was when the crown was fully extracted.

After the time has been set and the crown pressed back into place, the retrograde displays all return to their original positions. To set the day-of-the-week display, press the button at 2 o’clock to advance the display in single-day increments. The button at 4 o’clock is used to set the date display. So far, so good, and eminently simple, too. This watch has no 24-hour indicator for the hour hand, so the wearer must determine whether the hour shown on the dial is a.m. or p.m. Failure to take this detail into account may cause the date and weekday displays to advance at noon rather than at midnight.

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