On June 26, 1801, a Swiss watchmaker working in France by the name of Abraham-Louis Breguet was granted a ten-year patent for the tourbillon.
According to its inventor, the unusual mechanism Breguet built into the movement was designed to increase timekeeping accuracy. The mechanism is referred to as "Régulateur à Tourbillon" in the patent, which can be translated as a "vortex regulator" or "whirlwind regulator". It's a pity the watchmaker didn't leave any clues behind to explain why he chose this name for the invention.
German watchmakers sometimes use the comparatively technical term "Drehgang", which can be translated as a "rotating gear". The name "tourbillon" caught on one way or the other, and Breguet's brainchild is now regarded as one of the most beautiful, ethereal and prestigious mechanisms in complicated watch mechanics.
It was a brilliant idea, but one which proved difficult to implement. A movement's accuracy is known to vary depending on its position under the influence of gravity. These types of losses or gains are referred to as positional errors. In a tourbillon, the balance with the hairspring, lever and escapement wheel are placed in a rotating cage.
This averages out the positional error by rotating and changing the position of all the components that have the greatest impact on timekeeping accuracy. Breguet himself only managed to tackle the problems associated with assembling and adjusting the finicky mechanism towards the end of the 19th century.
Throughout Breguet’s entire life until his death 1823, the watchmaking company he founded only manufactured a total of 35 tourbillon watches. Tourbillons were came nowhere close to being widely manufactured for almost the next 180 years.
The mechanism is referred to as "Régulateur à Tourbillon" in the patent, which can be translated as a "vortex regulator" or "whirlwind regulator.
Nevertheless, watchmakers always kept a close eye on the ingenious construction, and would try to reproduce it or add something of their own to Breguet's classic design whenever they had the chance. The tourbillon would usually resurface again when money was no object and accuracy needed to be optimized.
They were mainly used in chronometers made for the observatory competitions held at astronomical observatories, which watch companies considered a very powerful means of advertising in the 19th and early 20th century. Winning one of these competitions was like winning an Olympic medal for these watchmakers.
Those who mastered making a good tourbillon were few and far between. The big watch brands — the ones that are still popular today — would usually order their tourbillons from these masters. Specialists were then hired to fine-tune the movement and ensure the complicated mechanism performed to its full potential.
Pocket-watch movements with tourbillons lived up to the expectations and picked up awards at chronometer competitions. These rarities of their time were later enclosed in cases and sold to expert collectors and connoisseurs, and now drum up very high bids at auctions. Let's look at how the tourbillon has evolved over the past 220 years.
The Russian literary magazine Otechestvennye Zapiski reported that Ivan Tolstoy was the first Russian master to make a chronometer tourbillon pocket watch in 1829. What happened to this watch remains a mystery. What we do know is that Konstantin Chaykin became the first in Russia to create a tourbillon table clock 175 years later.
An orbital tourbillon with the axis of rotation outside the balance was patented by the Swiss watchmaker Louis Linzaghi in 1905. In 2001, the Swiss company Ulysse Nardin introduced the Freak wristwatch with this type of tourbillon.
It was the result of work undertaken by the brand led by Dr. Ludwig Oechslin to develop the idea of the central carousel tourbillon designed by Carole Forestier in 1997. The tourbillon had received the Prix de la Fondation Abraham-Louis Breguet in honor of the 250th anniversary since the birth of Abraham-Louis Breguet..
In 1927, the Swiss watchmaker Jämes-César Pellaton broke the record set by Ernest Guinand for the smallest tourbillon at 23.7 mm in diameter. Pellaton didn't hold onto the record for long though, as Swiss-born Fritz-André Robert-Charrue managed to whittle the tourbillon regulator down to 19.7 mm in diameter.
Franck Muller managed to make the tourbillon even smaller in 1998, albeit by only a fraction of a millimeter, to 19.15 mm. The most compact tourbillon on the market today is Bvlgari's Caliber BVL150 presented in 2020, which measures 22 × 18 × 3.65 mm.
It's also one of the few tourbillons specially designed to be housed in watches for her. In 1945, the watchmaker André Bornand who worked for the company Patek Philippe assembled the first tourbillon intended for wristwatches.
There were no plans to sell the tourbillon, which was made specifically for the observatory trials to compete in the "chronometres-bracelet" wristwatch category. Only later were these tourbillons fitted in watch cases for sale.
The most compact tourbillon on the market today is Bvlgari's Caliber BVL150 presented in 2020, which measures 22 × 18 × 3.65 mm.
In 1947, the company Omega made the caliber 30 I in the "chronometres-bracelet" wristwatch category, which was 30 mm in diameter. One of them was enclosed in a 37.5 mm steel case in the same year and became the first tourbillon wristwatch.
A year later in 1948, Édouard Belin of the Besançon Watchmaking School built a tourbillon into the tonneau-shaped Caliber T18 movement by French firm Lip. It was the first tourbillon movement which wasn't round in shape, and another three wristwatch pieces were made based on it.
In 1951, Patek Philippe's pocket-watch tourbillon No. 198'423 scored record-breaking marks in the chronometer trials at the Astronomical Observatory of Kew and Teddington in Great Britain.
The idea of a double-axis tourbillon with two cages, one inside the other, was put forward in 1921 by Sir David Salomons, an expert on watches by Abraham-Louis Breguet. The English watchmaker Anthony Randall developed a design for the double-axis tourbillon in 1977, who applied to have the invention patented.
In 1978, the English watchmaker Richard Good went ahead without him and created the first working example with a double-axis tourbillon, which he put in a carriage clock. In 2003, Thomas Prescher was the first watchmaker to come up with a flying double-axis tourbillon in a pocket watch.
The company Franck Muller unveiled the first wristwatch with a double-axis tourbillon in the same year (the Revolution 2 Tourbillon). The first triple-axis tourbillon was invented and placed in a carriage clock in 1979 by the English watchmaker Richard Good.
The first series of tourbillon wristwatches were produced in 1986 by Audemars Piguet.
Forty years on in November 2019, the master watchmaker Anton Sukhanov made the first Russian table clock equipped with a triple-axis tourbillon, the Pharos Triple-Axis Tourbillon Clock. Triple-axis tourbillons had already appeared in wristwatch movements fifteen years earlier.
They were developed by the independent Swiss watchmaker Thomas Prescher and the company Franck Muller in 2004 (the Revolution 3 Tourbillon watch). The first series of tourbillon wristwatches were produced in 1986 by Audemars Piguet.
The Ra Tourbillon Automatique was also the first watch to be fitted with an automatic winding mechanism, and its titanium tourbillon cage was the most compact (7.2 mm in diameter) and the lightest (0.123 g). The watch was developed by Swiss watchmakers André Beyner and Maurice Grimm, who set another world record: at 2.7 mm thick, the prototype they constructed still holds the title for the thinnest tourbillon wristwatch.
In 1981, the firm Girard-Perregaux created a pocket watch with a tourbillon and three gold bridges as a reproduction of the historical model designed by Constant Girard it had produced since 1884. The company began releasing tourbillon wristwatches with three gold bridges in 1991.
In 1999, these watches were given an automatic-winding mechanism with a micro-rotor placed under the mainspring barrel. The Breguet which we have to thank for inventing the tourbillon launched a wristwatch tourbillon series in 1988 with technical support from the Nouvelle Lémania watch movement factory. The year 2005 turned out to be a productive one with an abundance of tourbillons.
Flying tourbillon watches were presented by the companies Roger Dubuis (the Excalibur Double Flying Tourbillon) and Louis Moinet (the Twin Tourbillon Apollon). Another company that performed in this category was Greubel Forsey. It introduced the Quadruple Tourbillon à Différentiel, which is essentially a flying double-axis tourbillon watch.The Swiss watchmaker Antoine Preziuso unveiled his triple-axis orbital tourbillon to the public — the 3Volution.
In 2008, A. Lange & Söhne built and unveiled the Cabaret Tourbillon wristwatch, which features a stop seconds mechanism to halt the tourbillon while the hands are being adjusted. For the first time in more than two centuries, this means that the time can be set accurately to the nearest second on a tourbillon watch.
The Russian watchmaker Konstantin Chaykin was the first to create a table clock with a tourbillon that could be stopped. The device he invented was installed in his Shabbat Clock in 2012, which locks the tourbillon on Judaism's day of rest.
These are just the key milestones that give us a general idea of how this beautiful complicated mechanism has evolved since Abraham-Louis Breguet invented it 220 years ago. Tourbillons have since found their way into practically every category and trend in haute horlogerie — from table clocks to pocket watches and wristwatches.
And over the last three decades, we've seen that the sky's the limit when it comes to where a tourbillon can be put to use: in watches for him and her, jewelry watches, dress watches and dive watches. They can be combined with other complicated mechanisms in complicated and grand complication models... A device may have been invented to stop the tourbillon, but like a whirlwind, the tourbillon itself will remain an unstoppable force.