Chronometry - Jaeger-LeCoultre Double Winner
4 December 2009
In days gone by, chronometer competitions not only provided extreme excitement but also helped brands and watchmakers determine their worth. It was simple: the more precise a brand's products were, the more these brands could charge for their mechanical watches.
The heyday of the wristwatch chronometer began in the late 1940s when illustrious names in horology began taking part in observatory competitions, though in 1967 these stopped. The exciting contests were forgotten until Le Locle's watch museum Château des Monts decided to organize a new concours in 2007, the rules of which were based on those of yesteryear.
Modern Competition
The heart of the competition is naturally the actual testing process: the entire encased watch is tested here, not just the movement. The other great improvement is that the watches are subjected to shocks as if they were being worn on a daily basis, including magnetic fields as they are continuously encountered in our modern world. The testing criteria are based on ISO 3159, the same norm used by testing institutes in Switzerland, France, and Germany.
All watches — whose movements must not exceed 38.5 mm (17 lines) x 15 mm or a surface area of 1,164 mm2 — were simultaneously observed 24 hours a day for 15 days each in diverse positions, at varying conditions, and at different temperatures. The first leg of the testing was performed at the Besançon Observatory, and the second leg at the C.O.S.C. in Biel—where they underwent the same tests on different machines. The great unknowns—shock and magnetism—were then proofed at Le Locle's Institut d'Horlogerie et Creation - IHC-Arc -, where the judges feared the worst for the complicated pieces. Unfounded, as it turned out: all survived the ordeal. The timepieces then returned to the C.O.S.C. for another round of testing, which also surprisingly showed that the performances of the remaining 11 timepieces were equal or superior to those taken before the shock testing.
If the watches displayed no deviation throughout this process, they obtained a perfect score of 1,000 points. Each second of deviation measured was one point taken from this score. Five watches were eliminated after the first round of testing due to various failures and errors.
Participants
Fourteen entrants with sixteen timepieces divided into the categories "independents" - 3 - and "brands" - 11 - were tested. The winners were revealed on December 3 at the museum in the presence of a veritable "who's who" of quality watchmakers.
Jaeger-LeCoultre not only took first place in the brand category with 909 points for the Master Tourbillon, the Le Sentier-based brand also took home second place with the triple-axis tourbillon Gyrotourbillon 1, which earned 908 points—indisputably proving the value of the tourbillon escapement's original intended use.
Caliber Papillon, an eleven-day movement 37.2 mm in diameter beating at 28,800 vph was the independent winner with 795 points. Rene Addor, who spent most of his life working at Rolex, devised this mechanism and produced it in his garage in the Vallee de Joux.
"True and traditional watchmaking is all about continuous improvement," says Stephane Belmont of Jaeger-LeCoultre. "Throughout history, watchmakers have striven to improve precision, but recent years have forgotten that. Our tradition is to make mechanics to have better performance—including precision."
The next Concours de Chronometrie will be held in 2011, and it can only be hoped that it be opened to entrants from all countries, and not solely Europe.
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