The timeline of the tourbillon began with the pocketwatch. The tourbillon regulator made the jump to wristwatches in 1930, when the watch company LIP makes the first wristwatch with a Tourbillon. Renowned watch houses such as Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet, and of course Breguet followed suit with their first tourbillon wrist models. About the late '60s something foreboding occurred. This was the start of a period of watch manufacturing that is heralded as the most difficult crisis ever experienced by the Swiss watch industry - the advent of the quartz oscillator.
However, even as some watch companies tanked, the watchmakers continued to produce mechanical marvels and hard times was experienced for the next decade or so. Yet the romance of the tourbillon regulator was such that it was being produced again in the very first years of the mechanical revival - the ultrathin automatic winding hammer tourbillon wristwatch from Audemars Piguet in 1986 (Last published retail US $37,000).
In fact, some credit this watch for starting the mechanical watch renaissance. What made this watch so unique and exciting was that this was the first production tourbillon with automatic winding, and the tourbillon was the smallest ever produced, having a diameter of only 7.2mm and a height of 2.5mm. It also boasts a cage made of titanium for the first time and an automatic winding hammer made out of platinum-iridium alloy, an extremely dense yet heavy material. Another novel aspect is that the movement itself is the case - a design that shaved precious millimeters off the total thickness of the case. It was the "ancestor" of many of the modern tourbillon wristwatches.
However, its winding efficiency was not as high as Audemars Piguet had hoped, and so their rather daring pride in not allowing manual winding created some running problems. As a daily wear, for most lifestyles, it was prone to stop running simply due to the mainspring not being wound enough. In 1991, Audemars Piguet added a power reserve indicator and date on this complication. In 2002, they created the Royal Oak Concept Watch (around US $192,000) to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Royal Oak.
More than two years in the making, this futuristic watch houses a tourbillon with titanium hand winding movement and dynamograph. The watch features a unique power reserve display that displays the remaining going barrel revolutions rather than hours as is displayed in most power reserve watches. The up-down indicator on the right shows how many more times the barrel will continue to rotate before it runs out of steam. Each of the revolutions, from 0 to 12, allows a reserve power of 6 hours meaning a total of 72 hours when it is fully wound (pointer reaches graduation 12).
The sophisticated dynamograph, set at 12, allows a clear display of the torque supplied by the mainspring. The dynamograph lets the mainspring of the watch to be maintained within ideal winding limits by indicating exactly when the movement should be rewound. In fact, power flow from the mainspring is not linear - above average when the mainspring is tightly wound and tapering off gradually towards the end.
A winding gauge on the barrel determines the position of the dynamograph needle on the dial. This supplies the wearer with immediate information about the current mainspring stress and power. The dynamograph provides a qualitative suggestion of how to achieve greater precision by maintaining the tension of the barrel spring through the rewinding of the movement when appropriate. Rewinding the movement when the needle moves beyond the zone of ideal stress shown on the indicator keeps the watch at peak time-keeping precision. The tourbillon cage itself is mounted on titanium shock absorbers - shock resistant to multiple g's well beyond the shock tolerance of the human body.
Another innovative feature is the watch's winding and hand-setting system: a special push-piece lets the wearer choose among the crown's several functions ("wind," "set," and "neutral"). This means that it's no longer necessary to extract the crown when the wearer wants to wind the mainspring or set the hands. Also, after the push-piece has commanded the crown to assume the "neutral" position, the crown is entirely uncoupled from the gear train. A designated display on the dial indicates the crown's momentary status. The Concept Watch is crafted from alacrite 602, an exceptionally resistant super-lightweight alloy with hardness of 430 Vickers widely used in aerospace and energy production and it marks the first application in wristwatch production.
Since the introduction of the Audemars Piguet Tourbillon 1, there has been a cornucopia of tourbillon wristwatches, and complicated wristwatches with tourbillon regulators.
One of the earliest artistic applications of the tourbillon regulator is in the Tourbillon Sous Trois Points d'Or, or Tourbillon Under 3 Gold Bridges first created by Constant Girard-Perregaux in 1867 for pocket watches. The three bridges hold the barrel, the train, and the balance. The Tourbillon Under 3 Gold Bridges is a stunning rendition of supreme watchmaking technique that exemplifies horology's highest ideals, with its bold clarity and unabashed richness, lyrically merging complexity with simplicity.
The original tourbillon was so complicated that Constant Girard-Perregaux had been able to construct only 20 such devices during a quarter century of work. The original tourbillon chronometer won a first class rating and a prize from the Neuchâtel Observatory. In the 1970s, the relatively small Girard-Perregaux manufacture decided to revive the fabled three-bridge tourbillon as a pocket watch. Before that could be done, however, the firm needed to purchase a large number of 19th and 20th century GP watches from King Farouk of Egypt. The king's collection included a number of models for which they no longer had either the tools or construction plans. Further, GP, possessing no diagrams or plans depicting the antique watches, was forced to study and meticulously measure one of Constant Girard-Perregaux's original chronometer tourbillons. It isn't hard to imagine the difficulties confronting the modern experts: Each of the 19th century tourbillons was a unique work of high-craftsmanship - custom-built from non-standardized parts that were assembled to harmonize with each other. Back then, no one was thinking about serially produced interchangeable parts. Furthermore, the 20th century watchmakers needed to learn old and largely forgotten skills, so that some of the new components could be finished with an 18th century wooden guilloch¡§¦ machine.
Adaptation of this unique eye-catching design to wristwatches occurred in 1991 and caused quite a stir. However, different from their tourbillon pocketwatches, the design engineers decided to invert the mechanism before installing it in a wristwatch case so that the painstakingly crafted bridges and the tourbillon cage would be visible on the dial side of the watch rather than hidden from view on its underside. As shown below, the movement having finely shaped symmetrical solid gold bridges, solid gold wheel train, and tourbillon is prominently displayed through the dial. The three milled gold bridges are so emphatically present on the dial that they steal the show from all of the other components. Even the dial's legibility is somewhat subsumed by the bridge's beauty.
Since then the concept of the Tourbillon Under 3 Gold Bridges has been applied to movements having variations such as hand-wound, hand wound with chronograph, one with a minute repeater that renders time audible, automatic with micro-rotor, and the ultimate, the Opera One (US $ 375,000) which features a carillon striking work that imitates the bells that chime at Westminister Cathedral in London. An Opera Two adds a perpetual calendar with date, day, month, and leap year to the Opera One. Another application of the tourbillon regulator was the flying tourbillon invented in Saxony, Germany in the 1920s by Alfred Helwig. While tourbillon carriages are normally pivot mounted on one side and bridged on the other, or bridged on both sides, the flying tourbillon's carriage is pivot mounted on one side with no supporting bridge to tie it down. This gives the tourbillon the impression that it is floating in mid-air thus voiding all gravitational pull. The flying type of tourbillon regulator is being produced by manufactures like Blancpain, IWC, and Glashutte Original, and independent watchmakers such as Vincent Calabrese.
The revived brand Blancpain has several flying tourbillon offerings that are included with chronographs, split-second chronographs, perpetual calendars, and rattrapante perpetual calendars. Some of their tourbillon models even have an eight days power reserve. With only the same number of turns of the crown required of a common 2 day movement, an 8 days power reserve can be achieved.
In the 1990s, Blancpain created the ultra-complicated Self-Winding Tourbillon Split-Seconds Flyback Chronograph watch (US $115,000). In 2001, Blancpain unveiled the Quattro platinum watch - an elegant self-wound timepiece housing a tourbillon regulator, perpetual calendar, flyback chronograph, and split-seconds chronograph (US $150,000). To celebrate Blancpain's original founding in 1735, a model aptly named the "1735" puts all that is possible in today's microtechnical industry in a diminitive amount of space. This one single wristwatch comprises an ultra flat movement outfitted with moonphase, tourbillon, perpetual calendar, split-seconds chronograph, minute repeater, and automatic winding (US $684,000).
A reverso watch housing a tourbillon regulator was launched by the prestigious watch manufacture Jaeger-LeCoultre in 1993. The legendary Reverso watch was first presented to the world in 1931 and was an immediate hit - and to this day, the Reverso model family is the most well-known product made by Jaeger-LeCoultre.
The solid gold case swivels to reveal the Jaeger-LeCoultre tourbillon. The tourbillon movement, caliber 828 is a manual winding movement with a 45-hour autonomy. The tiny tourbillon cage alone, weighing a mere 0.25 of a gram, carries seventy parts. As with all Patek Philippe tourbillon watches, on the finished watch, Jaeger-LeCoultre's tourbillon regulator is visible only through the caseback, ... but as it is a reversal, the wearer enjoys the privilege of presenting it in front at their own leisure. (US $65,000 for platinum version).
But Jaeger-LeCoultre's Gyrotourbillon I (US $275,000) that was unveiled in 2005 beats everything that has come out of the company until now: the watch combines a tourbillon with a perpetual calendar, a running equation of time, a double retrograde date display, and an eight-day power reserve. The tourbillon itself is made of two carriages to allow multi-directional rotation more suited to wristwatches than the pocket watches for which the tourbillon was invented. The external carriage, made of aluminum, turns every 60 seconds. The internal carriage, made of aluminum and titanium, turns every 24 seconds.
In 1795, Breguet invents the tourbillon. Then came the flying tourbillon invented in Glash¡§©ötte, Germany - a tourbillon with no bridge. In 1993, Mr. Kiu Tai Yu invents the mystery tourbillon - a tourbillon with no bridge, no carriage.
Born in 1946 in Soochow, China, Kiu Tai Yu, at an early age, discovered a talent for fixing broken watches and clocks. Friends and family would bring him heirlooms of great value to be repaired, and he memorized their mechanical structure and craftsmanship. Entirely self-taught, he built his first watch at the young age of 23. On his 45th birthday in 1991, Kiu Tai Yu astonished the horological world by making the first Asian tourbillon entirely on his own. The last time China made any impact on the horological world was about 10 centuries ago when Su Song, an imperial attendant was commissioned by the dragon throne to construct a time measuring instrument as a standard for the Celestial Kingdom. His ingenious solution was a water clock, the first timepiece ever to have a mechanical escapement, and is thus the direct ancestor of today's Rolex.
Mr. Kiu Tai Yu reduced the elaborate European tourbillon to its barest functional essentials in the Kiu Tai Yu Mystery Tourbillon. The escapement and balance are not housed in a rotating cage and its bridge (as in the traditional tourbillon), and without visible means of support. To create the illusion, Mr. Kiu Tai Yu suspends the balance wheel, with the balance spring underneath, from an invisible bar of crystal. Although Mr. Kiu Tai Yu has attended every Baselworld show since 1992 exhibiting his unique watches, sorry his watches aren't for sale. For Your Eyes Only!
In 1994, in celebration of Omega's 100th anniversary (1894-1994), Omega created the world's first Central Tourbillon wristwatch (US $40,000.00). For the first time, the tourbillon mechanism running at 21,600 vph holds a major place - in the center of the watch. The hour and minute hands are painted on two revolving sapphire discs. The gear mechanism for the sapphire discs is moved to the periphery of the dial, to make room for the escapement and tourbillon cage in the center, which itself carries the seconds hand the OMEGA symbol Ω. Due to the layout of the gear mechanism, the crown is used only for winding up the watch with time setting functions provided from a wheel on the back of the watch.
IWC's Da Vinci Tourbillon (US $59,000) combines a tourbillon, chronograph, perpetual calendar with date, day, month, four digit year display, and moon phase. The calendar will show an absolutely correct date until 2499 thanks to its "century disc."
The IWC 7 days Portuguese Tourbillon Mystere (US $89,000): The flying tourbillon seems to float freely above the black wheel that propels it.
Zenith presented its first tourbillon at Baselworld in 2004. Three years in the making, Zenith's El Primero Grande ChronoMaster XXT (US $104,000) combines a tourbillon with a chronograph and is the world's first and only tourbillon with a balance that beats 36,000 times per hour. The tourbillon is incorporated into an automatic chronograph movement and is encircled by a date ring that moves counter-clockwise.
The name "Frank Muller" is no stranger to watch enthusiasts. The meteoric rise that has characterized the Frank Muller brand in only one decade is without equal in recent watch history. Launched in 1992, Frank Muller's line of mechanical timepieces, marvelous both inside and outside, feature complex pieces as minute repeaters, perpetual calendars, and of course tourbillons. Among his more celebrated watches is the Tourbillon Revolution, introduced in 2002 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the company. Protected by several patents, what makes this tourbillon watch so different and exciting is that with the simple push of a button on the case, the hour and minute hands sweep to the 12:00 position and like magic, the tourbillon cage rises from the movement level to literally hover over the dial for better viewing. The axial displacement forces the tourbillon cage to the surface - the hands taken out of the way - remain at 12 o'clock for as long as the tourbillon lift button remains pressed. An extremely complex mechanism, this timepiece also offers power reserve of approximately 70 hours. Among the other watch brands, Frank Muller's Tourbillon Revolution series are perhaps the only tourbillon watches to have such a unique feature, a timepiece paying homage as no other to the playful instincts of man.
A year later, he outdid himself once again by presenting to the world his Double Axis Tourbillon, aptly called the Revolution 2. Attached by suspension and sitting in a spherical cage like a ballerina, the double axis tourbillon revolves along two axes, rotates as if on tippy toes, while simultaneously performing a series of somersaults. On either side of the dial opening are two retrograde indicators - one going from 0 to 60, to show the revolving time the tourbillon cage makes along its more traditional axis while also functioning as the seconds hand, and the other indicator graduated from 0 to 8 minutes to show the time the tourbillon cage takes to revolve along its new double "revolutionary" axis. Costs of ownership for one will set you back about US $635,000.00, give or take a few dollars.
After Tourbillon Revolution 2, it was almost an obligation for the company to present Tourbillon Revolution 3. And present it, they did - the new three axis tourbillon rotates on three axes, the cages revolve at varying speeds: the inner cage every 60 seconds, the second cage every 8 minutes, and the large, outer cage once an hour. The complete movement comprises 289 finely crafted components worked individually by hand.
Since the tourbillon's 200th anniversary in 2001, the number of brands incorporating the tourbillon into their own wristwatches has increased exponentially. While in 2001, there may have been fewer than fourteen companies to feature such a highlight in their collections, at last count in 2005 there were more than fifty doing so. Nearly all major brands as of this writing has a tourbillon timepiece in their collection.
