Concepts capture the imagination; it’s that flight of fancy into the future of what might be that is so intuitively appealing. Every so often, in any form of manufacturing, a company produces what it thinks this near-time horizon should look like. This year, it was Roger Dubuis that surprised us all by presenting a concept watch based on its new association with the automotive world – chiefly Lamborghini, and the promulgating of hyper horology. The new Monovortex introduces three new forms of mechanism for the 21st-century automatic tourbillon chronograph.
First, there is the new tourbillon design at 9 o’clock. The escapement is the regulating organ for any mechanical watch, and it suffers from a number of forces acting upon it to disrupt accurate timekeeping. For a given escapement setup – where you have a balance wheel, spring, pallet and pallet wheel – the main forces are friction and gravity. The task of the tourbillon, invented by Abraham Louis Breguet, was to offset the effects of these forces by encasing the escapement in a cage that counter-rotated at a set interval (usually a minute). At this micro level of engineering, the smallest of differences can affect accuracy, where mass, speed of rotation, and angle of the watch all come into play.
Detail of the Monovortex tourbillon showing the innovative angled escapement as a new efficient form of the counter-rotating regulator.
If you’re wondering what angle I’m referring to, let’s remember that the tourbillon was initially invented for the pocket watch that would sit vertically in the pocket or on a stand most of the time. It was the advent of the wristwatch, with its multiple positions throughout the day, that obviated the need for a correcting cage. Recent research by a number of manufacturers has shown that an angled escapement is optimal. Roger Dubuis, in its patented Monovortex, keeps the essentials and does away with some of the bulk to arrive at an efficient form for a counter-rotating regulator. The balance wheel and spring are allowed to oscillate at an angle through 360 degrees, which keeps the countervailing forces to a minimum within the escapement while optimising the ability to compensate those acting upon it.
Second, Roger Dubuis has rethought the micro-rotor automatic winding mechanism. Whereas a tourbillon counteracts gravity, the rotor-driven winding needs it to operate. It stands to reason in terms of the physics of forces that the larger the radius and mass of the rotor, the more effective it will be. Roger Dubuis has turned the received knowledge on its head – quite literally – and developed the Turborotor Cylindrical Oscillating Weight. Placed at 12 o’clock, the rotor is positioned vertically, so that the entire force of gravity pushes down on it, like a spinning barrel, when the watch is worn flat on the wrist. The winding of the watch is still efficient; it uses gravity with the natural motion of a wearer’s wrist.
Third, there is the redesigned split-second chronograph function located at 3 o’clock. Constructed as a double-column wheel system, with the seconds count running with the large hand, the tachymeter scale has a highlighted “88”, a nod to Mr. Dubuis, who held eight as his lucky number. The minutes are recorded with the proprietary Rotating Minute Counter (RMC), known as the 120° RMC. It has a patent-pending display with a tripartite hand that carries the zero, one and two, accurately rotating past the zero-to-nine digits on the right.
Despite the Monovortex high technology credentials, it still has a traditionally manufactured and finished split-second chronograph mechanism.
Despite the high-tech materials in the case and strap – ranging from ultra-light red MCF (Mineral Composite Fibre) to pink gold, and titanium with black and grey coatings and accents of carbon – the movement is as traditional as haute horlogerie gets. Viewed through the sapphire caseback, the watch marks Roger Dubuis’s return to traditional hand-finished chronograph movement manufacture.
And finally, what ultimately makes a concept watch appealing is the fact that it is not for sale. It is, by design and intention, a unique and unobtainable piece – in this case, one that demonstrates Roger Dubuis’s ingenuity and creativity in defining hyper-horology.
Words: Dr Andrew Hildreth
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