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 The most extraordinary historical piece in Basel

Nearby, in a small stand that is almost hidden, a man is savouring not his revenge but the recompense for his hard work. In his display case, we can see the single piece that has just radically transformed the history of timekeeping: the world’s first chronograph, a “counter of thirds” dating from 1816 from the genius of Louis Moinet. “This discovery places Louis Moinet almost at the same level as Abraham-Louis Breguet: one invented the tourbillon, the other the chronograph,” beams Jean-Marie Schaller, owner of the Louis Moinet brand, who takes the honour of reviving the name of this modest but genius watchmaker from the annals of history.

When asked about the follow-on from this important discovery, Jean-Marie Schaller imagines launching an emblematic piece to celebrate the event. But it is too soon to talk about this, so while waiting we take a look at the brand’s latest piece, the Mecanograph.
This COSC-certified chronometer has a dial that is divided into two geometrically, with a perfectly classic half-dial with Côtes du Jura decoration on the right and a spectacular view of the balance with screws, the lever escapement with ruby pallet stones and the open-worked gear train on the other side. Suspended above this mechanism, the seconds hand with double reading vibrates eight times per second, thus transmitting the rhythm of 28,800 vibrations per hour of this beautiful in-house movement, developed in partnership with Concepto. Perfectly finished and decorated, this piece is offered at a very attractive price for the titanium version: CHF 12,000 (allow CHF 39,900 for the gold version).

MECANOGRAPH by Louis Moinet

But you can find both more affordable and more exclusive pieces at Louis Moinet. There is a big gap between the Derrick, with its one-minute tourbillon housed underneath an aluminium derrick that extracts its energy in 15-second cycles (CHF 280,000 for this piece that should be a hit in Texas or Uzbekistan) and the new Scott Dixon, which follows on from the Nelson Piquet in the sporty Legends collection – a chronograph with tachy-meter whose tinted sapphire crystal confers a sombre and racy look, which is further reinforced by carbon-fibre inserts around the bezel (CHF 9,900), but both clearly share the now well-established Louis Moinet identity.

 A lesson in genetic algorithms

One of the charms of BaselWorld is being able to move seamlessly from an independent watchmaker to a behemoth or, to put things another way, to leave Louis Moinet, who reached the fantastic level of 30Hz almost 200 years ago, to go and see “Mr 1,000Hz”, or Guy Sémon, the big chief of R&D at TAG Heuer.
The benefit of talking to this broad-shouldered engineer and university professor is that he doesn’t mince his words.
TAG Heuer’s product strategy? He explains: “At TAG Heuer, the average price is around CHF 3,000, with a peak at 12,000. Well above this, the brand offers exceptional pieces like the Mikrograph, which costs CHF 50,000 or the Mikrotourbillon, at CHF 220,000. Between the two, there is nothing! We are absent from all intervening segments, which are currently enjoying a boom and where the volumes are sold. But how can we enter this segment? With precious metals? That is not TAG Heuer territory and it’s not enough just to use some gold and go for it. So what then? What tools do we have at our disposal? Design and performance. TAG Heuer is an avant-garde manufacture. So we looked back over the past five years, during which we launched one very innovative product each year. We used this innovation as our inspiration and we have put it into a more affordable product. With it, we are opening up a new category in a sector where we were absent.” QED.

You remember the Pendulum, which in 2010 opened up a whole new avenue of exploration, that of the magnetic escapement, without a balance spring? There were two big problems to overcome to move forward from the stage of functional concept: the sensitivity of magnets to temperature differences and the linearity of torque. The second problem has gradually been solved by “topological optimisation and genetic algorithms”. What does that mean? By starting with a simple mathematical entity and moving forward by successive iterations, you can gradually give the algorithm you are looking for its “adult” form. Hence the name “genetic”. At the end of all these calculations and all-nighters, the R&D engineers at TAG Heuer managed to achieve a linearity of torque that was equal to, if not better than, that of a spring.

The second problem: heat. We cannot summarise the lesson in magnetism and spatial geometry – with a hint of quantum thrown in as well – that we were given (would we even be capable of doing so?). Suffice it to say that a very subtle dose of magnetism was conceived. To samarium alloyed with cobalt, which forms a “permanent magnet” but one which is unstable at certain temperatures, gadolinium – a rare earth metal – was added (in a proportion of 44 per cent). Gadolinium is the natural element with the greatest capacity to absorb thermal neutrons. Here, it acts like a shield, protecting the magnetic heart from temperature differences. And there you have it. The precision of the Pendulum improves from the 45 seconds of 2010 to one second per day today.
“We put this thingamajig in a TAG Heuer Monaco chassis, in accordance with our now well-proven dual chain principle, and we got the Pendulum 50 Hz, which times to 100th of a second,” concludes Guy Sémon. Something totally new for CHF 35,000, right at the heart of the target. And this is only a start of the conquest of this strategic segment. (Europa Star will come back to this innovation in more detail in issue 4/13, which is devoted to mechanical watches.)