Moonphase Complication Correctly Displays Lunar Cycle; Owner Still Confused by Phases of the Moon

A moonphase complication, re-indexed and returned from Silas Tilling's bench this week, was confirmed to be displaying the current lunar age to within a quarter of a day; its owner told this paper he had never once gone outside to check.

The watch, a Corvid & Lund Ref. 72, arrived with a service sheet that read "moon wrong." Edwin Marsh, 51, had been comparing the disc against a photograph on his phone. "It didn't match," he said. "So it was wrong."

The disc was not wrong. Its 59-tooth wheel advances one notch per day, the correct count for a 29.5-day cycle, and Tilling's bench checked it against a lunar almanac before the caseback came off. Malika's Bench Notes logged: disc within tolerance, client reference out of tolerance.

What does the moon look like tonight, Mr. Marsh? "I'd have to check the watch."

Marsh bought the Ref. 72, he said, because it was "the most complication I could get at the money,". Asked to point at the moon from the shop's doorway, he looked at the sky the way a person looks at an unfamiliar menu, then back at his wrist, then at Tilling, who had not moved.

Two days later Marsh brought the watch back. Having changed the clocks, he had re-set the moon disc by an hour as well, on the theory that the moon also observes the changeover. It did not. The disc was now a full day behind the moon, and Marsh had done it himself, carefully, with a tool he owns. Re-indexing took four minutes. The log entry: client-side correction, unrequested.

Basil Keene's collecting group held a lunar observing evening, and Marsh attended, disc correct, and could not locate the moon for the first twenty minutes of a session scheduled around it. Inez Bellamy, who left that group in protest several years ago and has not missed a meeting since, spoke from the back row. "The moon is a complication," she said. "It's the only one that doesn't need a service."

Was the watch accurate before Marsh got involved? "The watch has been accurate every day I've had it on the bench," Tilling said. "It's had three days of him."

Marsh has purchased a chart, which hangs at eye level behind the desk where he spends the hours in which the moon is, technically, doing something. He can name four of the eight phases in order and has been known to reverse two. He demonstrates the complication at the shop door for anyone who asks, pointing the dial at the sky as though introducing two parties who ought to know each other.

It is correct. It was correct when it left, correct when he changed it, and correct again now, and it will be correct through the chart, the office, and the observing evening at which nobody looked down.