Discount A. Lange & Sohne Hand Wind Replicas, High Quality A. Lange & Sohne Hand Wind Replica

A. Lange & Sohne Lange 1 Moonphase Ursa Major (119.026)

he loves it!

---- [Rating: 5 / 5 stars]

Review by Frederick Charles Waterfall, From Ukrain Odessa

A. Lange & Sohne Saxonia Thin Manual Wind Silver Dial Brown Leather Men's Watch 211.032

It's a Great A. Lange & Sohne Saxonia piece of equipment that is well priced also. A lot of newer models have a lot more capabilities and useful gadgets, but a lot of the time you really don't use them.

---- [Rating: 5 / 5 stars]

Review by Amber Johnson, From United States Of America Oak Brook

A. Lange and Sohne Zeitwerk Striking Time 18K White Gold Men's Watch 145.029

great colors! Thanks

---- [Rating: 5 / 5 stars]

Review by Amy Newson, From South Africa Johannesburfg

The highlights of A. Lange & Söhne's history are quite clear, but what are your personal highlights from your four years at the helm of the brand?
I have a highlight every year and that is when I see the new watches for the first time. I am involved from the early hours and I see things growing but I only have them in my hands and on my wrist in around November. This is the most special moment for me every year and it is what gives me the confidence to go through the rough times.

With over 50 new calibres in just over 20 year years since the brand was re-established you are averaging over 2 new calibres per year. Do you plan to maintain this rate of innovation in the future?
Definitely. We actually increased speed compared with this average over the past few years. Knowing what we have in the pipeline I can assure you that we don't want to slow down.

The new factory building that was opened by Angela Merkel last month - it's undoubtedly a milestone for the brand but what does it mean more specifically for the development of the company and its production capacity?
We still need to pack and move some stuff and having two separate buildings at the moment obviously means a certain break in communications while things are ferried around. But controlling the environment where we assemble the watches is extremely important and I think the new building will help us maintain the quality but maybe with less effort than before. We just experienced the hottest summer and the new building was perfect to work in. We had to do this to have the resources in order to train people for more flexibility. At the top we have very few people that can assemble the top watches, while at the bottom of the pyramid we have more people that can assemble the simpler movements. But we have to show these people a career path and for that we need a perfect environment.

Do you expect any sales boost from the publicity of the new factory opening with the German chancellor?
No, we are already at the top and very well known in Germany. The chancellor's visit was about Glashutte and not just A. Lange & Söhne, so it was an important recognition for the industry as a whole.

Earlier this year, you referred to "changing everything but changing nothing" with the new Lange 1. Can you tell us more about the delicate balancing act between the need to develop your products and movements without changing the iconic design of the watches?
Most of all, I am not alone. We work as a team and one person may destroy and another preserve, while a third moderates. Sometimes these roles may be reversed. I equate it to washing for gold. We can all see that there is a glimmer of gold in there but there is also a lot of other stuff that we need to get rid of. Since nobody can dominate this little group we have to have arguments to back up our claims and we do not take decisions based on hierarchy or job titles. He or she who has the best arguments wins. For the past four or five years this has proven to be very successful. It shows that we are moving forwards but not getting ahead of ourselves. We do take risks, and the decimal minute repeater is one example that nobody would have expected from a brand like us.

There is an attention to detail in your movements that pushes things almost to the extreme, such as the seconds hand coming to rest at 12 at the end of the power reserve for easier time setting. Where does such a painstaking level of detail come from: the customer, the watchmaker or both?
That's us, that's German. The Germans like to think things through to the end and that is the perfect example. It's the same story with the new Lange 1. We decided that we had to have our own hairspring, then as a consequence we said we should have our own escapement, then we thought we should improve the jumping date at 12 o'clock and in the end we had a totally new movement. That's German engineering: you have a clear task and you work it through to completion.

The Zeitwerk Minute Repeater is one of the finalists in the Striking watch category at this year's GPHG. What sets it apart from its competitors?
If you come up with something completely new for a complication that has been around for 200 years then you automatically set yourself apart from your competitors. It's a minute repeater that nobody has ever seen before. There aren't that many minute repeaters around anyway, even though the technology has been around for 200 years.

How important is it to participate in and win the Grand Prix?
It's a very difficult question. I enjoy winning the prizes but I don't think about it too much because it's not in my hands. Sometimes you are lucky and sometimes you are not and if I celebrated every time we won I would have to regret it every time we didn't win. I honestly cannot say whether there is a proper return on investment but what I can say is that when a German brand wins in Geneva it has to be exceptionally good!

The Richard Lange Perpetual Calendar "Terraluna" by A. Lange & Söhne was the winner of the Calendar Watch Prize of the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie on 31 October 2014. Walter Lange, the 90-year-old founder of company, received the Special Jury Prize. This prize rewards a personality, institution or initiative that has played a fundamental role in promoting fine watchmaking.

The Richard Lange Perpetual Calendar "Terraluna", had previously received two other important acknowledgements: At the Salón Internacional Alta Relojería (SIAR) in Mexico City it was named Watch of the Year and at the first GQ Time Awards in Munich it got the first prize in the Innovation category.

The Richard Lange Perpetual Calendar "Terraluna" combines A. Lange & Söhne's benchmark precision, inventiveness, and design competence in a horological piece. Featuring a patented orbital moon-phase display, a perpetual calendar with the Lange outsize date, a power-reserve of 14 days, and a constant-force escapement, this time-keeping instrument represents the pinnacle of Saxon watchmaking artistry.

Video "Calendar Watch Prize"

Video "Special Jury Prize"

"Meden ágan - nothing in excess" is one of the wisdoms of antiquity that advocates moderation and modesty at the entrance to the Temple of Delphi. Ferdinand A. Lange, the founder of the German precision watchmaking industry, may well have adopted it as the motto of his life. As a congenial expression of principles, it also characterises the style of his legendary pocket watches. They comply with his tenet that "each piece be as simple as possible and serve its purpose steadfastly and reliably". This product philosophy also applies to the 1815.

With its two-tier design and the subsidiary seconds at 6 o'clock, the solid-silver dial is reminiscent of Lange's historic pocket watches. This look is emphasised by a gently contoured bezel and the slender lugs. A railway-track minute scale, black Arabic numerals and blued-steel hands accentuate the classic appearance of the watch and enhance the legibility of its argente-coloured face.

The watch is powered by the manually wound Lange manufacture calibre L051.1, with a power reserve of 55 hours and hand-decorated movement parts. Many traditional Lange hallmarks are visible through the sapphire-crystal caseback: the three-quarter plate made of untreated German silver, a hand-engraved balance cock, a screw balance, a whiplash spring, screwed gold chatons, and thermally blued screws.

The watch is also available in yellow and pink gold, and in a 40mm version.

Since its restart, the manufactory in Saxony has presented twelve models with this complication. But never be-fore has the moon phase been as prominently showcased as in the new Grand Lange 1 Moon Phase.

The moon-phase display indicates the time that elapses from new moon to new moon with an accuracy of 99.9978 per cent. The average synodic month lasts 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 3 seconds. For the sake of simplicity, most classic moon-phase displays round this cycle down to 29.5 days. The resulting deviation of 44 minutes and 3 seconds per lunation adds up to one day in merely two and a half years. The much more precisely calculated seven-gear transmission of the Grand Lange 1 Moon Phase reduces the deviation per cycle to less than one minute. Once correctly set, and assuming that the watch runs continuously, the display would only have to be corrected by one day every 122.6 years.

The more than 300 stars that decorate the intense blue lunar disc were cut-out with a laser with such an extreme precision that it looks like a miniaturized image of the galaxy.

If the preview of the new tourbillon by A. Lange & Söhne is any indicator, the upcoming SIHH promises to be a wonderful fair for Saxony's premier watch brand.
The look of this new tourbillon was inspired by a pocket watch now found in the state museum Mathematics Physics Salon that was made by Johann Heinrich Seyffert (1751-1817). Seyffert, a curator of the above-mentioned museum, made less than 100 timepieces during his lifetime, most of them for the royal Saxon court and various scientists and explorers such as Alexander von Humboldt. The regulator, made in 1807, not only separates the three displays (hours, minutes, seconds) on the dial, but is also driven by chain and fusee in its movement - thus making it the perfect role model for A. Lange & Söhne's newest addition to the Richard Lange family.
 

One decisive element separates the modern wristwatch from the vintage pocket watch - and every other watch in existence: a cutaway in the seconds subdial (which is intersected by the hours subdial) that reveals the elegant stop-seconds tourbillon at work is outfitted with a a pivoting segment that "disappears" and "reappears" at 12 and 6 o'clock respectively to allow for perfect legibility. This playful function decisively separating this timepiece from any other is achieved by use of a cam wheel positioned at 6 o'clock. The tourbillon (as well as the chain-and-fusee construction that is present in all of Lange's "pour le merite" timepieces) was made visible by cutting openings in the otherwise closed Glashutte-style three-quarter plate. The tourbillon hacks, which means that when the crown is pulled out to set the time, the balance and the tourbillon are both halted to allow for precise setting to the second. The only other timepiece that is capable of this feat is A. Lange & Söhne's Cabaret Tourbillon, the watch in which Lange's engineers introduced the practical element.
 

With a power reserve of 36 hours - a generous amount of time when you consider that the aperture flip twice an hour costs the manually wound movement a great deal of energy - the Richard Lange Tourbillon Pour le Merite in a 41.9 mm platinum case is strictly limited to 100 pieces. In a rose gold case it remains unlimited, though the difficult production process is certain to keep the number of pieces manufactured per year to a minimum.
 

"I shut my eyes in order to see." For once, the phrase coined by Paul Gauguin* was taken literally by Lange's masters so they could gain a clear outlook on some fundamental issues concerning the future of precision watchmaking.
How can the principles of a mechanical watch and a modern time indication format be persuasively combined? What are the lasting values of a watch? And is it possible to visualise the flow of time such that it can be experienced or felt with other senses? In dealing with these questions, they began to assemble the mental image of a timepiece that explores new paths: the Lange Zeitwerk.
With its all-mechanical numeric display for hours and minutes, the watch symbolises a leap into a new era - after all, both indications leap forth instantaneously, thanks to a disc configuration never before implemented in quite this way.
The Lange principle clearly differentiates itself from the so-called creeping digital minute displays in which the hands are merely replaced by permanently rotating discs. It also distinguishes itself from the genuine jumping numeral mechanisms found in pocket watches (Pallweber and Durrstein principles) by introducing two key improvements: the first truly conveniently legible format of the numerals and the precise generation of switching steps based on a proprietary constant-force escapement.
One small step for a watch, but a giant leap for horology: thanks to the innovative jumping numerals mechanism, the Lange Zeitwerk displays the hours and minutes in a larger-than-ever format to assure perfect legibility. Thus, the watch probably constitutes the first truly mechanical alternative to the indication of time with rotating hands.
A totally new sense of time
With its all-mechanical numeric display for hours and minutes, the Lange Zeitwerk symbolises a leap into a new era - after all, both indications leap forth instantaneously. Contrary to continuously running (creeping) displays, it always tells the time dependably and unambiguously. Moreover, its innovative configuration of discs results in numerals of probably unmatched size. Thus, it gives its owner a totally new sense of time.
The next dimension in design
The new design vocabulary of this timepiece reflects a horological evolution. The time bridge - the framework for hours, minutes, and subsidiary seconds - assertively stretches its wings across the entire width of the dial. The perpetually smiling power-reserve indicator radiates optimism.
The comfortable crown
Pointing northeast, the crown also symbolises an uptrend. But in particular, its unusual position prevents it from jabbing the back of the wearer's hand, thus introducing a new sense of comfort on the wrist.
A watch for all senses
In the Lange Zeitwerk, the sensuousness of a mechanical watch is endowed with an additional quality. The disc switching action is optimised to allow an attentive listener to acoustically distinguish between a single minute advance (1416 times a day) and a collective progression at the full hour (24 times a day).
The movement
Jumping numerals according to the Lange principle
The manufacture calibre L043.1 features a jumping numerals mechanism for hours and minutes. Designed according to the Lange principle, it consists of two minute discs and a large hour ring. Precisely once a minute, a constant-force escapement generates the necessary switching impulse. Viewed through the caseback, the movement presents a host of further forwarding-looking inventions.
The patented barrel
The patented mainspring barrel delivers the enormous amount of energy required by the movement, especially when all three discs need to be simultaneously advanced at each full hour. The venerable wind/unwind principle was literally turned upside down for this purpose. As the mainspring relaxes, the barrel rotates in the minimised-friction bearing. Conversely, the mainspring barrel bearing with the higher friction rating is involved while the watch is being wound. Thus, a slightly greater effort is required when winding the watch but in return, more of the energy stored in the mainspring remains available for powering the movement. Additionally, the size of the mainspring itself can be reduced without any concessions in terms of energy yield.

A multi-talented constant-force escapement
A constant-force escapement is positioned between the barrel wheel and the balance. This patent-pending mechanism has two crucial functions. On the one hand, it generates the switching steps for the instantaneous jumps of the hour and minute displays, using the strike-train principle with warning followed by drop-and-release as often found in striking clocks. Never before has such a mechanism been integrated in a wristwatch. On the other hand, the constant-force escapement drives the balance with nearly uniform power during the entire autonomy period and thus enhances the rate stability of the movement.
A fresh breeze for the movement
An unusual device sends a fresh breeze through the movement. To cushion the comparatively large forces that occur when the discs are accelerated and braked, it contains a fly governor that absorbs and dissipates part of the energy as it rotates.