Breguet продолжает развивать наследие турбийона с внедрением магнитного анкерного механизма

Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Style Edit: Breguet’s tourbillon legacy and its enduring role in watchmaking history STORY SCMP Style Reporter From Abraham-Louis Breguet’s 1801 patent to 2025’s Expérimentale 1, the tourbillon remains at the heart of the maison’s ongoing horological innovation There have been moments in watchmaking when a problem as fundamental as gravity became the starting point for an entirely new chapter in horology. For Abraham-Louis Breguet, that moment came at the turn of the 19th century. In the pocket watches of his era, the balance and hairspring were particularly vulnerable to the effects of gravity with the watch remaining in a vertical position for extended periods. His solution was not to fight gravity, but to keep the regulating mechanisms moving through it. On June 26, 1801, Breguet was granted a patent for his tourbillon regulator. Its ingenious principle was to place the escapement and regulating organ inside a rotating cage, continuously changing their position relative to gravity. By averaging out positional errors, the mechanism could improve the consistency of the watch’s timekeeping. Advertisement That cage would become one of the most recognisable signatures of mechanical watchmaking – and a surprisingly fertile area for experimentation. The original construction was made from materials very different from those used today. Breguet’s modern interpretations employ titanium for the cage, reducing its weight and therefore the energy required to keep both cage and balance in motion. Even seemingly minute details have been reconsidered: the contemporary Tradition Tourbillon, for example, uses a three-arm cage rather than the two-arm construction described in Breguet’s original patent, improving stability and resistance to shocks. The most compelling expression of that philosophy is seen in the Expérimentale 1. Here, Breguet returns to the same fundamental question that occupied its founder – how can the precision of a mechanical watch be pushed further? The answer is radically contemporary: a 10Hz tourbillon combined with a constant-force magnetic escapement. The high frequency allows the regulating system to recover rapidly from disturbances, while controlled magnetic interactions help maintain a consistent impulse to the balance. Breguet’s first tourbillon was an attempt to neutralise one of nature’s most persistent forces. Nearly 225 years later, the maison is still experimenting with ever-more refined solutions – only now, gravity is joined by the effects of magnetism, the need for shock resistance and the demands of increasing precision. The cage keeps turning. The question remains the same: how far can mechanical timekeeping go? 5 things you may not know about Breguet Select Voice Select Speed 1x AI-generated voice