This Panerai timepiece modernizes an ancient practice.
The simple moon phase complication traces its roots as far back as roughly 200 B.C., when early Greek horologists developed a hand-operated calculator that could predict eclipses. Thirteen centuries later, the Chinese scientist Su Song built a 40-foot-tall water-powered astronomical clock tower, and by the early Renaissance, many church congregations could keep track of the lunar path and of the orbits of the known planets (even if they did believe Earth occupied the center of the galaxy). Eventually, the feature appeared in complex German and English grandfather clocks and, in the 20th century, was shrunken down to fit in a wristwatch. Now, as
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