This year, Revolution turns 20. Two decades of chronicling watches, people and ideas have given us a front-row seat to a remarkable story: how an age-old craft has both preserved its soul and reinvented itself for the 21st century. To celebrate, we’ve chosen over 100 names and milestones that, for us, define the era so far. From leaders to watches, you can see the whole list here.

When Franck Muller introduced the Aeternitas Mega in 2007, it became, by a wide margin, the most complicated wristwatch ever made, and it would hold the record until this year, when it was finally surpassed by the Vacheron Constantin Solaria. The Aeternitas Mega incorporated a total of 36 complications in a self-winding micro-rotor movement, among them a secular perpetual calendar, a split seconds chronograph, a flying tourbillon, and an equation of time, a grande and petite sonnerie, and minute repeater with Westminster chiming.

Apart from its sheer number of complications, each complication was executed with a level of completeness that placed it beyond mere accumulation. The split seconds chronograph, for instance, was constructed in its most sophisticated and elaborate form, with a flyback function, an instantaneously jumping minutes and an isolator. That level of sophistication anticipated solutions that would become mainstream only later. In fact, it appeared two years before Patek Philippe would unveil its first in-house chronograph.

The same approach extended to the chiming works. A grande and petite sonnerie, with a minute repeater and Westminster carillon, represents the summit of chiming complexity. A grande sonnerie differs from a basic repeater by three distinct mechanisms, namely an automatic release that unlocks the striking train every quarter; a manual release that allows the watch to act as a repeater on demand; and a silencer that suppresses automatic striking when discretion is required. With the Westminster carillon, the difficulty compounds, since the quarter rack must be cut to actuate four hammers in the correct melodic sequence at each quarter.

Equally rare is the secular perpetual calendar, which encodes a 400-year cycle, eliminating leap years in three consecutive centuries and restoring one in the fourth. It employs a 12-month program wheel that encodes the varying lengths of the months, with shallower steps for 30- and 31-day months and a deep step for February. A separate leap-year cam then prevents the grand lever from fully dropping into the February notch during a leap year. At the end of a compact step-down gear train is a 400-year secular cam that intervenes during century years. It presents three low steps that force the lever back, so February is reduced to 28 days in 2100, 2200 and 2300, and a high step that restores the leap year in 2400.

For nearly two decades, the Aeternitas Mega stood as the ultimate expression of mechanical excess, remarkable not only for its record-breaking complexity but also for the rigor of its execution.

Tech Specs: Franck Muller Aeternitas Mega

Movement Self-winding Caliber FM3480 QPSE, with separate barrel for striking mechanism; three-day power reserve
Functions Hours, minutes and small seconds; split seconds chrono with flyback function; flying tourbillon; equation of time and dual time zone indicators; secular perpetual calendar with moonphase; minute repeater with grande and petite sonnerie
Case 42mm × 61mm × 19.15mm; platinum
Dial Silvered, guilloché, with multiple subdials
Strap Hand-stitched black alligator leather with 18K white gold pin buckle