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XIThe Mechanical Renaissance

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Chapter XI · Act III — Owning Time

The Mechanical Renaissance

1985–2010

The mechanical watch stops being necessary, and that is why it becomes desirable: culture, craft and art.

Once a cheap quartz watch keeps better time than any other, the mechanical watch is no longer needed. And that is exactly why it becomes desirable: for its craft, its culture and its art.

The calibre

Drag to turn it · arrow keys on a keyboard · double-click to face it

A mechanical calibre, taken apart on the bench. The wheels reproduce no particular calibre; their speeds are those of a train at 28,800 vibrations an hour.

  1. 1Barrel
  2. 2Going train
  3. 3Lever escapement
  4. 4Balance and spring

  1. The barrel stores the energy: a mainspring that unwinds over days.

  2. The train shares it out: the centre wheel turns once an hour, and the fourth wheel once a minute, carrying the seconds hand.

  3. The escape wheel and the lever let it go in equal beats, like the foliot seven hundred years before.

  4. The balance and its spring keep the beat: 28,800 vibrations an hour, eight a second. And everything goes back in its place.

Craft, culture and art

  1. The co-axial escapement

    George Daniels devises it in the 1970s and patents it in 1980; Omega brings it to market in 1999. It is one of the few new escapements since Mudge’s lever, and in theory its pallets need no oil.

  2. Blancpain, again

    Jean-Claude Biver and Jacques Piguet buy the rights to the name for 22,000 francs: “Since 1735 there has never been a quartz Blancpain watch. And there never will be.” In 1992 they sell it to SMH for 60 million.

  3. The Calibre 89

    Patek Philippe marks its 150th anniversary with a pocket watch of 33 complications and 1,728 parts, weighing 1.1 kilos. Five years of research and four of making; four are made.

  4. The Lange 1

    Walter Lange and Günter Blümlein had refounded the Glashütte house in 1990, nationalised in 1948. In Dresden they unveil its first collection: the Lange 1, with its off-centre dial and outsize date.

  5. 1999–2000

    The independents

    François-Paul Journe founds his house in 1999 under the motto “Invenit et Fecit”: he invented it and made it. In 2000 Philippe Dufour presents the Simplicity, finished by hand by himself.

  6. Spring Drive

    Seiko puts on sale in Japan a watch with neither escapement nor balance: a mainspring drives the hands and a quartz crystal brakes them to its beat, to a second a day. Yoshikazu Akahane had conceived it in 1977.

  7. Silicon and fibre

    Ulysse Nardin’s Freak has no dial and no hands: the movement turns on itself, and its escapement has silicon parts, a first. That year the RM 001 tourbillon opens Richard Mille’s house.

The Line of Precision

The error a day of each chapter’s clocks, on a logarithmic scale. The line moves on with the story: each chapter draws its own stretch.

This chapter’s precision

Mechanical chronometer (COSC)2000s
−4 / +6 s a day
  1. c. 1390 BCE: Clepsydra, ≈ half an hour a day
  2. c. 1386: Foliot tower clock, ≈ 15 min a day
  3. 1656: Huygens’s pendulum, ≈ 15 s a day
  4. c. 1715: Graham’s regulator, a few seconds a week
  5. 1761: Harrison’s H4, 5 s in 81 days
  6. 1889: Riefler regulator, ≈ 0.01 s a day
  7. 1921: Shortt-Synchronome clock, ≈ 1 s a year
  8. 1955: Essen and Parry’s caesium, ≈ 1 s in 300 years
  9. 1969: Quartz wristwatch, ≈ 5 s a month (a reference, not the best instrument of its time)
  10. 2000s: Mechanical chronometer (COSC), −4 / +6 s a day (a reference, not the best instrument of its time)

Squares are wristwatches and chronometers, not the best clock of their age: the line rises with them because the chapter tells their story.

This chapter’s sources