Each year we take a moment to note the anniversary of the first tourbillon, the whirling regulation device Abraham-Louis Breguet patented on June 26, 1801. Breguet’s invention helped make pocket watches more precise by counteracting many of the negative effects of gravity on timekeeping precision.
As is the case each year, Montres Breguet has provided us with a few visual reminders of how Breguet’s invention eventually started more than two centuries of tourbillon development by watchmakers.
A Breguet tourbillon
That development, however, was surprisingly slow. Found primarily in pocket watches and the occasional clock, the tourbillon wasn’t adopted for serially produced wristwatches until the 1980s, though a few prototype wristwatches with tourbillons were developed by Omega in 1947 and even earlier by special order at other Swiss manufacturers and by the French maker LIP.
Breguet Tourbillon N°1188
Breguet also reminds us that Abraham-Louis Breguet created only thirty-five tourbillon watches, with fewer than ten known to survive (including the No. 1188, pictured above).
The Breguet N°2567
The House of Breguet possesses several additional historical tourbillon pocket watches, including No. 1176 sold by Abraham-Louis Breguet in 1809, and No. 2567 sold in 1812, along with original records that list every single Breguet historical creation.
Many original Breguet tourbillons can be found in the Breguet Boutique & Museum in Place Vendome, Paris.
Here are just a few recent Breguet tourbillon watches that bear witness to the legacy of the man who devised the device, and whose name is on the building.
For 2020, Breguet adorns the dial of its Extra-Thin Self-Winding Tourbillon with a touch of deep blue, by using the traditional grand feu enamel technique.Engraved caseback of the newest Breguet Extra-Thin Self-Winding Tourbillon.Breguet this year offers its Marine Tourbillon Équation Marchante 5887 with a rose gold case with a gold dial.The eye-catching engraved caseback of the Breguet Marine Tourbillon Équation Marchante 5887.
TAG Heuer today introduces a second Carrera collector’s edition to mark the Swiss watchmaker’s 160th birthday.
The new TAG Heuer Carrera 160 Years Montreal Limited Edition.
The TAG Heuer Carrera 160 Years Montreal Limited Edition, the new limited edition of 1,000 watches, echoes the brand’s White Heuer Montreal from 1972, complete with that model’s colorful dial marked with then-novel yellow luminescence.
The eye-catching 39mm watch arrives about six months after TAG Heuer started this anniversary year by launching the equally fetching TAG Heuer Carrera 160 Years Silver Dial Limited Edition, which we discussed here.
TAG Heuer says that a now highly collectible White Heuer Montreal, reference 110503W from 1972, inspired the new watch’s retro design. As a result, TAG Heuer has echoed that watch’s red, yellow and blue coloring scheme.
The White Heuer Montreal from 1972.
The new model somewhat replicates the original dial, though in a current Carrera case with right-side crown rather than a cushion case with a left crown, and without the marked pulsimeter and tachymeter references seen on the original. TAG Heuer has replaced those references with a blue and red ruled scale, and replaces the ‘Montreal’ monicker with ‘Carrera.’
However, the new model echoes the original’s use colorful luminescence, which was just being developed at the time. The TAG Heuer Carrera 160 Years Montreal Limited Edition, as a result, features a chronograph minute counter (at 3 o’clock) with three curved lines, each colored with yellow SuperLuminova. The same color is also found on the central minute and hour hands. The central chronograph seconds hand is colored with straight red lacquer.
The dial itself features three blue subdials (with updated hands) protected by a domed ‘glassbox’ sapphire crystal, inspired by the original.
TAG Heuer’s own Caliber Heuer 02 manufacture chronograph movement powers the tribute watch. The movement, visible from the sapphire caseback, includes a column wheel and a vertical clutch and boasts an impressive eighty-hour power reserve.
Packaged in a special box, TAG Heuer will package the Carrera 160 Years Montreal Limited Edition in a special gift box and make it available in July at TAG Heuer boutiques and online at www.tagheuer.com. Price: $6,750
Specifications: TAG Heuer Carrera 160 Years Montreal Limited Edition
Movement: TAG Heuer Caliber Heuer 02 Automatic manufacture movement with column-wheel chronograph, vertical clutch, power reserve of 80 hours.
Dial: Blue, white opaline dial, white flange with 60-second/minute scale and three counters (at 3 o’clock: blue minute chronograph counter with yellow SuperLuminova, at 6 o’clock: blue permanent second indicator, at 9 o’clock: blue hour chronograph counter. Rhodium-plated minute and hour hands with yellow SuperLuminova. Red lacquered central hand. Black printed logo.
Case: 39mm polished steel, polished steel fixed bezel, domed sapphire crystal, polished steel standard crown and pushers, steel screw-down sapphire caseback with special numbered limited-edition engraving. Water-resistant to 100 meters.
Strap: Blue alligator leather with polished steel folding clasp and double safety push buttons.
A clear sapphire caseback is not the only new feature that makes the latest Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox distinctive from its predecessors. Jaeger-LeCoultre has also completely redesigned the striking mechanism, in part by attaching the alarm gong directly to the case side rather than the solid caseback.
The new Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Control Memovox Timer
This overriding change anchors the Master Control Memovox Timer and the Master Control Memovox, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s two newest updated and upgraded Memovox offerings.
The new Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Control Memovox
Differentiating the two debuts, announced earlier this month, is a new alarm-setting mechanism within the Master Control Memovox Timer, and a subtly updated dial design with a date display that characterizes the Master Control Memovox.
Premiere alarm
Five years after Jaeger-LeCoultre introduced its first Memovox, which debuted in 1951, the Swiss watchmaker made history by developing an automatic version, the first automatically wound alarm wristwatch. Its chime is the audible result of the movement’s hammers hitting circular gongs, which have historically relied on the caseback for amplification of the chime.
The new generation Memovox Automatic Caliber 956 and its peripheral bells, shown here from the back of the Master Control Memovox Timer. The open caseback reveals the play of the hammer on the bell.
The newest Memovox models feature gongs attached to the case itself rather than the (now-sapphire) caseback. While I haven’t had the opportunity to listen to these chimes directly, I suspect Jaeger-LeCoultre has taken great pains to retain the Memovox’s distinctive ‘school-bell’ tone with this update to Caliber 956.
The new-generation Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 956, which powers the Master Control Memovox Timer.
The newly transparent sapphire back, which allows the wearer to watch the chime hammer in action, also exposes a new, open-worked pink gold rotor, decorated with Côtes de Genève to match the fine finishing on the movement plates.
The timer
On the new Memovox Timer, Jaeger-LeCoultre developed a timer that enables the owner to set the alarm, using the top crown, based on the number of hours that should elapse before the alarm rings.
Alternatively, the owner can set the alarm to sound at a particular time. The small hand with the Jaeger-LeCoultre logo indicates the elapsed hours-until-alarm. On the outer edge of the distinctive Memovox inner ring (here quite modern, engraved in bas-relief), a triangular marker points to the time at which the alarm will ring.
Jaeger-LeCoultre will produce the Master Control Memovox Timer as a limited edition of 250 pieces. Price: $15,700.
Retro-style
For the Master Control Memovox, Jaeger-LeCoultre offers a subtly modernized version of its manual-winding 1950 Memovox.
Jaeger-LeCoultre has paired the Master Control Memovox with a new Novonappa calfskin strap that recalls the color of the first Memovox straps.
Note its classical alarm and date display with a silvery sunray-brushed dial, applied triangular indexes, Dauphine hands with an updated blue seconds hand. As a nod to the past, Jaeger-LeCoultre has paired the Master Control Memovox with a new Novonappa calfskin strap that recalls the color of the first Memovox straps. Price: $11,600.
Jaeger-LeCoultre presents both these new Memovox models in the new 40mm Master Control case with an angled bezel, curved lugs and a contemporary combination of polished and satin-brushed surfaces.
Specifications: Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Control Memovox
Case: 40mm x 12.39mm stainless steel with satin and polished finishes, clear sapphire caseback, 50 meters water resistance.
Japanese designer Hiroshi Fujiwara has teamed with TAG Heuer once again to design a limited edition watch based on TAG Heuer’s sporty Formula 1 model fit with the Caliber Heuer 02 chronograph movement.
The new TAG Heuer X Fragment Design Chronograph Limited Edition.
The new TAG Heuer X Fragment Design Chronograph Limited Edition combines Fujiwara’s streetwear designs with TAG Heuer’s technical expertise and current Formula 1 case, a design based on a cushion-shaped case TAG Heuer used in the late 1960s and 1970s.
The resulting chronograph watch features a less cluttered dial design than those found on the TAG Heuer Formula 1 models. Fujiwara utilizes a retro-inspired two-subdial layout and then subtly customizes it with red accents and small white lettering and logos.
Fujiwara teamed with TAG Heuer in 2018 to put his designer touch on a Carrera, where TAG Heuer more typically utilizes its advanced in-house Heuer 02 Chronograph movement, most often in a three-subdial layout.
Fragment influences
Japanese designer Hiroshi Fujiwara, founder of Fragment Design.
The 44m steel TAG Heuer Formula 1 case retains the collection’s black ceramic tachymeter bezel, but replaces standard markers with small red squares, with two squares at the top of the dial in place of the Formula 1’s familiar ‘12’ marker. Just below the two red squares Fujiwara places his Fragment Design logo, with ‘Fragment’ printed on the dial between the 4 and 5 o’clock positions.
A circular red sapphire crystal window on the caseback displays the automatic column-wheel chronograph movement with a red overlay that also features the dual-lightning logo of Fragment Design, the influential design house Fujiwara founded in 2003.
The new watch arrives with a five-row steel bracelet with a folding clasp. TAG Heuer is engraving each watch with a unique limited-edition number from 1 to 500.
The new TAG Heuer X Fragment Design Chronograph Limited Edition will be available to pre-order from www.tagheuer.com and in select TAG Heuer boutiques before going on sale on July 27. As a limited edition of 500 pieces, and with the Fragment Design collaboration, expect strong demand. Price: $6,150.
Specifications: TAG Heuer X Fragment Design Chronograph Limited Edition
Movement: Automatic Caliber Heuer 02 with column-wheel chronograph and vertical clutch, 80-hour power reserve
Case: 44mm polished steel, ceramic black polished tachymeter, fixed bezel, flat sapphire crystal with double anti-reflective treatment, steel screw-down crown, red sapphire screw-down caseback with special engraving, water-resistant to 100 meters
Dial: Black opaline with two counters:
– 3 o’clock: black embossed minute chronograph counter
– 9 o’clock: black embossed hour chronograph counter
Red printed indexes, rhodium-plated hour and minute hands with white SuperLumiNova, red lacquered central hand, white TAG Heuer printed logo, date window at 6 o’clock, “HEUER 02 AUTOMATIC/FRAGMENT” printing
The new watch, to be issued as a limited edition of 1,000, features a blue-grey central dial embossed with a light-reflecting ‘carbon’ pattern surrounded by a white railway track scale hour circle. The wide bezel, rare among Calatrava models, frames pierced baton hands (that might remind you of the 2017 Ref. 6006 Calatrava), applied and luminous Arabic numerals and a date at 3 o’clock.
In addition to the steel, a case material rarely used by Patek Philippe, the Geneva watchmaker also utilizes several other special features on the new watch, including a calfskin strap with white decorative seams and an embossed structure meant to recall fabric, all matching the color and structure of the central dial.
The commemorative Patek Philippe Ref. 6007A-001 Calatrava also comes with a sapphire-crystal caseback, exposing automatic Caliber 324 SC, and marked with a Calatrava cross and the “New Manufacture 2019” inscription. The year noted is when the first work groups moved to the new production building.
Under one roof
Patek Philippe’s newest manufacturing facility, now complete after five years of construction, unites all of the manufacture’s Genevan facilities under one roof. With ten floors, it expands the 1996 building complex and anticipates the manufacture’s growth in the next twenty to thirty years.
Patek Philippe’s new Manufacturing facility.
Patek Philippe describes the new building as appearing like an ocean liner from the exterior and filled with references to Patek Philippe watches inside. The building’s curved hallways are “reminiscent of the gently rounded octagon of the Nautilus case,” while the fire escape ladders offer a silhouette that resembles leaf-shaped hands.
The new Patek Philippe Ref. 6007A-001 Calatrava will be issued as a limited edition of 1,000 watches. Price: $28,351.
Specifications: Patek Philippe Ref. 6007A-001 Calatrava
Movement: Caliber 324 S C. Self-winding. Date in an aperture. Sweep seconds, central rotor in 21-karat gold. Frequency: 28,800 semi-oscillation per hour (4 Hz). Power reserve: 45 hours.
Dial: Gray-blue, dial center embossed with “carbon” pattern, gold applied numerals with luminescent coating. White gold white lacquered baton-style hands with luminescent coating.
Case: 40mm by 9.07mm steel, water-resistant to 30 meters, sapphire crystal case back decorated with the Calatrava cross and the inscription “New Manufacture 2019”.
Strap: Calfskin, embossed with fabric pattern, gray-blue. Prong buckle.
The commemorative Patek Philippe Ref. 6007A-001 Calatrava also comes with a sapphire-crystal caseback, exposing automatic Caliber 324 SC, and marked with a Calatrava cross and the “New Manufacture 2019” inscription. The year noted is when the first work groups moved to the new production building.
The building’s curved hallways are “reminiscent of the gently rounded octagon of the Nautilus case,” while the fire escape ladders offer a silhouette that resembles leaf-shaped hands.