Jaeger-LeCoultre

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Look what is coming....

Found on another forum...

Fascinating article from the FT on the new JLC Grand Sonnerie -and a world first, its ability to replicate the full Westminster Carillion. Three years in the devising, four years in the making - delivered in an 800lb safe!

(Click on the link below for other articles from FT's watch supplement today www.ft.com )

Article begins:

How many complications do you want in your life?

While most of us go through life trying to make things less problematic, complications have long been regarded as rather desirable in the topsy-turvy world of high-end watchmaking, Simon de Burton writes. Abraham Louis Breguet probably started it all in 1783 when he was commissioned to create the most complicated watch in existence as a gift for Queen Marie Antoinette – it took 44 years to finish, by which point time had run out for both Breguet and the queen.

Incorporating close to a dozen functions, including a perpetual calendar, minute repeating mechanism, thermometer, power reserve indicator and chronograph, it remained the most complicated timepiece ever made until 1897 when Leroy No One was constructed for an affluent Portuguese collector called A-A de Carvalho Monteiro. This topped Mr Breguet’s effort by having 20 complications, but was eclipsed in January 1933 when Henry Graves Jr, an obsessive American horolophile, took delivery of the Supercomplication timepiece ordered from Patek Philippe almost five years earlier.

It boasted 24 complications, contained more than 900 components, weighed one 1lb 3oz and cost Mr Graves SFr60,000. Patek waited until 1989 to trump itself by creating the Calibre 89 to mark its 150th anniversary – more than 2lb in weight, 1,728 components, 33 functions and about $6m.

All of the above marvels of micro-mechanics have, of course, been contained in large, pocket watch cases – but making an ultra-complicated movement to suit the far smaller format of a wristwatch is considerably more difficult.

Until now, the most complicated wristwatches available have been the Patek Philippe Sky Moon Tourbillon with 12 functions, the Vacheron Constantin Tour de L’Ile (16), the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso a Tryptique (17) and the Franck Muller Aeternitas Mega with a claimed 25 complications and a price tag of £1m.

By the end of this month, however, Jaeger-LeCoultre expects to be carrying out the last bits of fine tuning on its new Duometre Grande Sonnerie that boasts a world record number, for a wristwatch, of 26 separate functions, the most impressive being a mechanism that plays Big Ben’s Westminster Chimes from beginning to end – a little more quietly, of course, than the real thing.

Replicating the melody of the Westminster carillon using the tiny gongs and hammers found inside a minute repeating wristwatch has long been considered horology’s Holy Grail, and while watches capable of playing part of it have existed for more than a century, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Grande Sonnerie is the first to be able to reproduce all four sequences in succession.

Watches such as this are not created overnight. Apparently David Candaux, the young watchmaker who designed the Duometre Grande Sonnerie’s movement, spent three years “just thinking about it” and a further four years working on it.

Among the features Mr Candaux devised to enhance the volume and clarity of the striking mechanism was a special type of microscopically small hammer, the head of which is attached to a moveable arm. When the watch strikes, the four hammers accelerate until they touch a tiny “finger” which releases a second moveable arm to boost the speed of the heads milliseconds before they hit the gongs.

Stephane Belmont, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s communications director, says, the famously inventive watch house decided to create the Duometre a Grande Sonnerie as a demonstration of its technical prowess.

“We wanted to show that we could do something that the other great names have yet to achieve, and that is the recreation of the complete sequence of the Westminster chime – but although the watch is extremely complicated, we also wanted it to be easy to use and reliable enough to wear on a daily basis.”

But only extremely wealthy people will will have the opportunity to make the Grande Sonnerie their “daily wearer”. It will be available exclusively as part of a €1.8m ($2.5m) collection of three highly complicated Jaeger-LeCoultre watches, the other two being the Gyrotourbillon and the Reverso a Tryptique. This trilogy, will be sold in an edition of 30 sets, the first of which is expected to be delivered to its owner in September next year.

Each set will be supplied in a customised, six-foot tall, 800 kilo safe made by the German company, Doettling.

The only thing Jaeger-LeCoultre might not have got quite right is the name of the collection – Hybris Mechanica 55. As Greek scholars will know, hybris is the word from which hubris is derived – yet surely the last thing the maker of the world’s most complicated watch could possibly want is for pride to go before a fall?

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Sounds incredible to me....But priced out of reach for almost all..

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