t’s one of Muhammad Ali’s most famous mottos and the secret of his success: ‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’. It’s a statement that could easily be applied to the latest creation from Urwerk, the UR-150, a watch that also flies and stings… but like a scorpion. Inspired by the arachnid’s stinger, the nickname of this creation references the trajectory of the 240-degree minutes sector, resembling a scorpion’s tail poised to attack. This symbolism also extends to the retrograde minutes hand, ready to unleash its blistering power as it strikes each passing hour… fast and fearsome.
- The model’s retrograde mechanism is reminiscent of mechanical automatons: a flying carousel bearing the three hour satellites follows a route determined by a cam. The latter orchestrates the motion of the carousel, a performance that lasts precisely 60 minutes. As the hour hand reaches ’60’, depicted in green numerals, an Urwerk spring triggers the UR-150’s lightning-fast attack: the retrograde hand makes a 240° jump and the hour satellites simultaneously rotate 270°.
This UR-150 features a large openworked hand framing the current hour. The tip of this hand arcs over the minutes track. Once the 60th minute has elapsed, the hour hand jumps to zero and the journey begins anew. At the same time, all the satellite hours spin on their axes and the retrograde hand frames a new hour – all in just 1/100th of a second.
“It’s like a perfect alignment of the stars, a perfect storm,” says Felix Baumgartner. “In order to drive all the satellites, guide the hour hand and ensure that each element jumps at just the right time, we have designed a new satellite complication system. It is based around a flying wheel and pinion positioned between the satellites and the base movement. It deciphers and follows the ‘guiding thread’ of a cam. We have therefore replaced our ‘classic’ device based on Maltese crosses with this cam and a rack system. This meant developing a spring so special that we needed to machine it in our own workshop. To make this burst of movement more visible, we have doubled the usual distance between the 60 and 0 markers.”
The retrograde system is the most ambitious ever undertaken by Urwerk. The weights employed are the greatest ever used and the speed and inertia the most intense, necessitating the creation of an unprecedented means of controlling the various dynamic forces at play. This technical feat is achieved using a speed regulator fitted to the UR-150’s flywheel, a mechanism usually employed to regulate the chiming sequence on a minute repeater. Here, it smooths the return of the retrograde hand. The UR-150 is available in two variations – Iron and Dark – of 50 pieces each.
Price: CHF 88,000 (Iron), CHF 89,000 (Dark)