The first big date wristwatch
On 24 October 1994, in the Dresden Residenzschloss, A. Lange & Söhne showed the Lange 1 with an outsize date in two windows, the first series-made wristwatch with a two-disc big date, and a quotation of the opera clock of 1841.
- The need
- A date you could read without looking closely, on a brand that had not made a watch for forty-four years and needed a face nobody would mistake for anyone else’s.
- Made by
- A. Lange & Söhne, Glashütte, refounded on 7 December 1990 by Walter Lange and Günter Blümlein. The first collection, the Lange 1, Saxonia, Arkade and Tourbillon “Pour le Mérite”, was presented in the Dresden Residenzschloss on 24 October 1994, and all 123 watches sold.
- What was new
- The outsize date: two digits about three times the height of a conventional date, from a units ring and a tens cross under two windows framed in gold, with a bar between them that hides the 0.15 mm step between the discs. The mechanism had been patented in 1991; the display quotes the Semper Opera clock, down to the blank window for the first nine days.
- Worth knowing
- The 1994 calibre L901.0 changed its date slowly around midnight; the instant jump came with calibre L121.1 in 2015. The date is corrected by a pusher at ten o’clock. The outsize date adds about 66 parts to a movement.
- Where it is now
- In production since 1994; the original references were 101.001 and 101.002 in yellow gold and 101.005 in platinum.
Historian’s noteLange itself says “the first regularly produced wristwatch” with an outsize date, and this site follows that wording. A mid-1960s GUB prototype with two date discs and no month programming, and 1930s–40s Girard-Perregaux and Mimo watches with separate tens and units windows, are reported in single sources and have not been checked against a museum or brand archive. See the big date page.
SourcesA. Lange & Söhne, the outsize date · A. Lange & Söhne, The time in five-minute increments · SJX, Lange 1 at thirty · Monochrome, old and new Lange 1
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