Patek Philippe - Advanced Research
It is now 10 years since Patek Philippe's Advanced Research department saw the light of day. The company has shone in the silicon stakes, manoeuvring adroitly between patents and amicable settlements. But in this age of interdisciplinary endeavours it could become increasingly difficult to achieve results that are entirely home grown.
Patek Philippe won't be celebrating the 10th anniversary of its Advanced Research department until 2016, even though it was established in 2005. Its achievements have mostly involved, or been confined to, components, but this is misleading, for Patek Philippe's Advanced Research holds some of the keys to the future of Swiss watchmaking.
Only some of the keys, because there are a great many brands with huge resources that are mostly in search of the same watchmaking holy grail of silicon and its promised applications. In other words, the path is narrow and the competition widespread. Fierce battles are fought over each application, production method and category. Some started well before the advent of Advanced Research in 2005.
Silicon's prehistory
Patek Philippe's Advanced Research department is based on work undertaken in 2001. It was then that Ludwig Oechslin, the former curator of the International Horological Museum (MIH) with the Swiss Centre for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) conducted the first trials of silicon balance springs. Unfortunately, problems with thermal compensation put paid to any watchmaking applications. Simply put, the balance spring proved unreliable in changing temperatures.
Further research was about to be abandoned when Patek Philippe, Rolex and the Swatch Group joined Oechslin and the CSEM. This new quintet came up with Silinvar, which solved silicon's problems. Silinvar is lightweight, homogenous and non-magnetic as well as being hard, non-corrosive and shock resistant.
On this basis, Patek Philippe set up the Advanced Research department tasked with exploiting the material in its wristwatches. The fact that the department presented its first results in 2005, the year it was created, is explained by its reliance on the four previous years of work with the CSEM, which had meanwhile registered the Silinvar trademark.
The first applications
The Advanced Research department transformed the traditional regulating organ by successively using Silinvar to make escape wheels in 2005, balance springs in 2006 and finally pallet levers in 2008. The entire assembly, known as the Oscillomax, was the first tangible result of the Advanced Research department, which forms part of a research and development structure that today employs 86 people.
Nevertheless, a legal battle was being waged in the background between Sigatec, an alliance between Mimotec and Ulysse Nardin on one hand, and the triumvirate of Patek Philippe, Rolex and the Swatch Group on the other. The former had crucial patents governing the etching and machining techniques to produce silicon micro-components as well as their assembly. In other words it held the keys to the application of silicon in watchmaking that everyone was looking for.
In November 2013, the rival parties decided to settle the matter amicably, or at least on good terms. They resolved to put an end to the litigation and to make their patents available to one another in a cross-licencing arrangement.
What about the future?
From then on, the Patek Philippe Advanced Research department continued to make headway with its partners. Since 2012 the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) has been one of the most energetic of these, not least because of the Patek Philippe-endowed Chair, known as Instant-Lab, co-financed by the company for eight years. It regularly publishes papers on theoretical advances in fundamental research into horology. The latest thesis, published in 2014, describes a formal model that will provide a systematic approach to escapements (O. Laesser: Analyse, synthese et creation d'echappements horlogers par la theorie des engrenages).
While students concentrate on such theoretical subjects, their professors have their feet firmly on the ground. Ten months ago, Simon Henein, the professor nominated to the Patek Philippe Chair, presented a new type of oscillator called the IsoSpring at the EPFL. Without going into details, it heralds the end of the jerky mechanism of the traditional escapement in favour of a regulator that rotates continuously in the same direction thanks to the elasticity of spring blades. As Patek Philippe points out, "IsoSpring is a development put forward and conducted by Instant-Lab. The project is financed by a number of Swiss watch companies. We therefore do not have any exclusive rights to this development. It is too early to say whether this project will result in an Advanced Research series."
More disciplines bring more competitors
The only problem is that Patek Philippe's Advanced Research department, which is 10 years old this year, will face increased competition in fundamental research, especially since its chair at the EPFL does not give it any exclusive rights over the results it obtains. Furthermore, the EPFL and the Richemont Group have announced a chair in "multiscale manufacturing technologies."
Other interdisciplinary bridges have also been built, notably by Microcity, the new microtechnical centre opened last year in Neuchâtel, which incorporates the local start-up incubator, Neode. All in all, if Patek Philippe's Advanced Research has so far benefitted from the interdisciplinary approach, it could also experience the drawbacks of having to share its skills.
[Rating: 5 / 5 stars]
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