Precision Instruments

Jaeger-LeCoultre reminds the world why it is called the Grande Maison with the Master Grande Tradition Gyrotourbillon Westminster Perpétuel, and a few other notable complicated watches

- Ashok Soman & Ching/Greenplasticsoldiers

There’s a largely forgotten but relatively recent riddle in fine watchmaking. It made the rounds in 2009, and it goes something like this: how many tourbillons does it take to make the hands of time go round the dial? The answer is anything but straightforward, but it takes the form of a few follow-up questions. If haute horlogerie is your thing then you may find these hilarious.

• Answer number 1: By tourbillons, do you mean to include karusels and carrousels too?

• Answer number 2: Will the tourbillons be single or multi-axis?

• Answer number 3: Are the tourbillons inclined?

• Answer number 4: Wait, do we actually need tourbillons of any kind (or karusels for that matter) to keep good time in a wristwatch?

• Answer number 5: Just kidding, we need as many tourbillons as possible, with as many axes as possible. Obviously, these will all be inclined at every possible angle. In fact, we don’t need hands, dials, or even cases. What we need is lots and lots of tourbillons. Or anything that can pass as a tourbillon. Even a karusel.

That last one is the punchline, although the whole thing works as a bit of a light-hearted jest, if one is so inclined. On a serious note, it all makes sense when you think of the tourbillon as a marketing story; a way to tell and sell the story of mechanical watchmaking.

Funnily enough, 2009 was also the year that a storied name in Swiss watchmaking decided to make a strong statement about the tourbillon. The manufacture was Jaeger-LeCoultre and the watch was the Reverso Gyrotourbillon 2, which beat out its field of competitors in a proper independent chronometry competition. The Concours International de Chronometrie may be no more, and it certainly had its failings, but this episode did highlight the fact that a tourbillon could play a valuable role in improving the accuracy of a mechanical wristwatch.