The manufacture Jaeger-LeCoultre has created a temporary exhibition in its Heritage Gallery museum celebrating its inventions.
Jaeger-LeCoultre, founded in 1833, has over the years created over 1,000 different calibers, of which more than 500 are equipped with complications, and has received 390 patents. Since 2000, JLC has filed 80 patents and created 68 calibers, introducing a string of world firsts including the spherical tourbillon spinning on two axes; the first wristwatch with three dials driven by a single movement; the first lubricant-free wristwatch; the first Grande Sonnerie mechanism sounding the complete Westminster chime; and the world’s most complicated wristwatch
Master Grande Tradition Grande Complication Exhibition
The “sound system” of its minute repeater mechanism represents the culmination of several years of acoustic research and features articulated hammers striking square-section “cathedral” gong-rings made from a secret alloy and generating a sound that is amplified by the sapphire crystal protecting the watch dial.
To regulate the mechanism and compensate for the effects of gravity, a flying tourbillon spins on its axis once a minute. In turn driving the watch dial itself, the tourbillon gravitates around the center of the watch at the same rotation speed as that of the earth in relation to the stars, meaning 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds – thus enabling it to indicate sidereal time (the reference for astronomers).
Simultaneously, a small sun circles the dial in 24 hours, indicating civil or standard time. The small discrepancy daily created by the superimposition of these two rhythms enables the watch to display both civil and zodiac calendars.
Equipped with the JLC caliber 945, this watch harks back to the very historical sources of time measurement history: its small gear trains reproduce the movements of the earth in relation to the sun and stars, and the association of the earth’s rotation and its gravitation around the sun serves to provide the calendar indications.
