Engineering Luxury: The World's Thinnest Luxury Watch

they say that necessity is the mother of invention the horrors of world war ii created jet engines plastic modern computing and of course the nuclear bomb other inventions have come from a desire to push humanity to new limits and make groundbreaking discoveries such as the numerous brilliant achievements from the space race however some inventions exist solely as exercises and exuberance and personal or corporate prestige nowhere is this seemingly pointless innovation more explicit than in the world of luxury timepieces in a world where computers can utilize nuclear timekeeping to mark near perfect accuracy and sync that information to billions of devices across the globe wristwatches using springs and spinning gears can fetch upwards of a million dollars apiece if a manufacturer can implement new technology in these archaic tools it can mean a wellspring of cash from the wealthiest people in the world the piaget watch company has done just that by releasing their ultra plano ultimate concept watch to market as an automatic mechanical wristwatch with a thickness of just two millimeters piers as a brand may not have the recognition of rolex or omega but the world of horology marveled at their incredible feat of luxury engineering a masterful design one of the hallmarks of luxury is its frivolity fine art can be laser scanned and replicated with incredible accuracy monstrously powerful sports cars can't legally reach their top speed on any road and lab-created gems can replicate priceless stones at a fraction of the cost with that the value of these goods comes from the artistry of their creators and the exclusivity of their rarity this puts luxury products such as wristwatches in a very slim category called veblen goods pebbling goods are described as products in which demand for the product rises as the price of the goods rise so while exclusive sales sporting huge discounts can drive sales up on the vast majority of products see the over-indulgence of an american walmart on black friday for that effect the high price and prestige of owning bevel and goods is actually what is being sought out it is the same effect that has sent the price of bitcoin which has no inherent value through the roof once some people saw that these intangible goods were increasing in value they rushed to buy them the rush of the new demand raised the price even more in a positive feedback loop the same basic concept is true with luxury watches brands need to come up with new and interesting ways to make sure their product is the center of conversation and make them more desirable to the greatest number of people and ensure their continued demand one of the most oxymoronic facts about luxury watches is that a toy watch given in a mcdonald's happy meal is several times more accurate than anything in rolex's catalogue the reasoning behind this is pretty simple the majority of consumer timepieces today utilize a computerized quartz movement the movement is the part of the watch that keeps time and either moves the hands or signals the display what time to show in an overly simplified explanation of an enormously complex process electrical signals sent through quartz crystals make it vibrate at a precise rate that can be tracked by miniature computers to keep incredibly accurate time with the proliferation of microprocessors and computing in nearly every product these have become incredibly inexpensive to produce often less than a dollar a piece this is why casio can sell their basic watches with multiple time zones alarms and timer functions for less than 15 on the other hand the vast majority of luxury watches made the same way they have been for over a century with tiny gears and springs rolex proudly boast all of their watches status as superlative chronometers which guarantees all of their watches will keep time being no more than two seconds a day fast or slow but will need to be serviced by an expert watchmaker every few years to keep that accuracy even the cheapest and least accurate quartz watches will be less than half a second fast or slow per day and can work near indefinitely with regular battery changes although it's often cheaper to chuck the whole thing out and buy another one which rolex owners aren't terribly likely to do after a very short period of digital watches being a high-end luxury spot the cameo on roger moore's wrist in the beginning of the 1973 james bond film live and led die high-end watch manufacturers such as rolex and omega doubled down on their commitment to traditional mechanical movements although less accurate than their digital counterparts the producers of mechanical watches use the century of tireless engineering from watchmakers to sell their products many high-end pieces contain features that are nearly pointless to the consumer but add impressive lines to their spec sheets many high-end divers watches contain helium release valves that have absolutely no purpose unless the wearer intends to take their luxury watch hundreds of meters deep on a saturation dive that's the only time that helium is used in diving since it is extremely rare to find a watch that costs under five thousand dollars that has this feature we're willing to bet that the majority stay perfectly dry also there are multiple pieces of high horology that contain a tourmaline a complication which is meant to keep the watch even more accurate by counteracting the effects of gravity on the mechanical movements but has absolutely no practical effect at all the singaporean watch brand zalas made waves in the watch world by offering the zelos mirage with a flying toil on at a price far below any competitor at only eleven thousand dollars it was in this environment that the piaget altiplano ultimate concept was born piaget has been making timepieces for a very long time they started making clock components in the late 19th century with georges piaget being the single employee at first by 1911 the company had been handed down to george's son timothy and they were shifting to the newly popularized wristwatches by the end of world war ii swiss neutrality allowed them to expand and open a full factory and increase production however it was in 1960 that they made a name for themselves by making a movement that allowed automatic watches that were only five millimeters thick to draw a comparison of how impressive a feat this was the standard issue watch for the united states military at the time was the hamilton field watch that sat 10 millimeters thick and was adopted partially because of its slight build piaget's watch was half as thick as its competitor also it included an additional counterbalance rotor to wind the watch automatically while the hamilton still had to be wound by hand every day despite the company changing hands a number of times over the decades they maintained their status as makers of ultra-thin watches even as the digital quartz watches swept the market they proudly announced their watches were still thinner however the demands for their watches were cut severely by the shift in the market and they decided to focus on their better performing jewelry by the 2010s the brand maintained their position as respected in the world of high luxury but the name had nearly evaporated from the cultural zeitgeist for public goods that trade nearly entirely on name being so far behind the juggernauts like rolex and omega made their expansion difficult they also lagged behind other titans of horology that had broadened name recognition such as patek philippe even young brands such as hublot and richard mill had more brand equity piaget's top designers have spent years designing and building a new piece that would turn the conversation back to them and in 2014 they updated their now classic ultra plano to set a new world record at only 3.65 millimeters thick for the entire piece piaget was back in the limelight once again however a discussion after the successful release between the proud engineers and the marketing team had an unintended effect one of them had made an often joke to the engineers that they look forward to next year when they made one that was even thinner despite the comment being made in jest piaget's design team started to think about the challenge what could they do to shrink their design even further to do this they had to start all the way back at square one although many prestigious brands such as rolex and patek philly design and manufacture the movements of their watches many of the smaller parts are still standardized the minuscule gears coiled springs the fragile components may be made by a separate designer and then used to assemble the custom movement in short there are only so many ways to make a tiny gear however this simply would not work for their new product to slim down the watch any further they would have to rethink how watches were made at all usually a watch's movement is manufactured independently and then placed into a variety of different watches that way the hugely expensive task of designing new movements can be mitigated by using them in many different watches and even across multiple brands seiko citizen and swatch all own their own movements and sell them to other manufacturers to use in their watches this collaborative attitude between otherwise competitors makes for lower prices across the board but because these movements were already designed and assembled there was no way to slim them down also the case the movement goes in would need to be large enough to accommodate the movement inside of it and leave enough room for all the moving parts to function correctly to thin out the design any further the movement needed to be the case of the watch itself and not an entirely separate part every single part of the watch had to be designed from scratch every gear spring and wheel needed to be manufactured individually by hand to ensure it complied with the rigorous standards of creating an ultra-thin timepiece with these challenges in mind the team started to work on the new record-breaking project since the psja team was designing a watch that was unlike anything that ever existed that means they encountered problems that were equally undiscovered the first of which was apparent immediately and that was the case material most watches are made of stainless steel with a few high-end pieces being made of precious metals like gold or platinum precious metals were completely out of the question for this design because they were far too soft keeping the watch as thin as possible meant the gold and platinum would crinkle like tin foil when strapped to the wrist usually this would mean reverting to steel but even that wasn't durable enough to maintain its shape at the thickness required the team experimented with many different alloys and materials until they eventually came up with one that fit the bill this metal composed of a cobalt alloy was incredibly robust they even hit it with a hammer to ensure that it maintained its shape and amazingly the metal handled the abuse this created another problem though the new and harder material meant that their drills saws and other tools wore out much more quickly against the more robust material watchmaker's tools that were enormously expensive quickly wore out on this single prototype a second issue that the team faced was that the watch would inexplicably speed up or slow down tremendously far outside the few seconds a day expected of pieces at this level adding to the confusion is that when the springs and gears were tested independently it stayed consistent only speeding up as the watch was assembled the culprit was soon recognized the regular back and forth motion of one part built up a small electric field next to the glass of the watch crystal this caused it to become magnetized and affect the careful timing of the movement a quick coating of the underside of the crystal alleviated the problem easily a bigger issue arose as they assembled some of the more delicate parts to maintain the minimum distance possible certain parts were affixed using adhesives one adhesive leaked through the minuscule gaps and the gear works and throws the entire movement in place there to remake every single part from scratch and include some specially milled channels within the watch case for the adhesive to spill into and keep it out of the more vital parts of the gear train and at last the watch was complete piaget had spent the better part of a century making their movement smaller and smaller and this team of engineers had spent nearly half a decade ironing out the kinks but the altiplano ultimate concept was finally revealed to the public in 2018 but much to piaget's surprise the reception wasn't as warm as they hoped the watch sat behind a glass on a pedestal at the showroom floor of the crowded convention and ticked away happily keeping time accurately just as it was meant to do however it stayed behind the glass nobody was able to handle it much less wear it around and show it off some skeptics claimed that it was so fragile that even bumping it would destroy piaget's masterpiece the concept piece was a one-of-one and though it hit the record for the thinnest mechanical and thinnest automatic watch it wasn't going to get the recognition that it wanted and deserved until it could be brought to market in april 2020 with much of the world still in lockdown from the covert 19 pandemic piaget announced that the alteplano ultimate concept watch was available for purchase despite the previous fears the watch proved to be incredibly robust considering its incredibly slight build even the band was reinforced with kevlar to assure that no part of the watch suffered due to its ultra-thin frame this time everyone recognized piaget's achievement it even brought home the gilda or the most prestigious award in watchmaking think best picture but for really expensive watches despite being a concept no longer piaget kept the name as the old plano ultimate concept watch because it was made as a proof of concept the watch that nobody asked for inspired by an offhand joke could become an incredible reality looking at pictures of the old plano ultimate concept watch it looks almost unreal the design doesn't match the standard view of a wristwatch all of the components are completely visible through the 0.2 millimeter piece of clear sapphire crystal embedded flush with the case looking at it from the profile it nearly disappears only the slightest glare from the silver of reflective cobalt stops it from fading into the white background of the product photos on piaget's website it says the price is available on request however we'll save you the phone call this piece of porological history can be yours for the price of 400 000 swiss francs which is just shy of 430 000 so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and as always thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Sideprojects

Views: 10,947

Keywords: megaprojects, construction, engineering, projects

Id: 0xykku3d1Go

Length: 14min 46sec (886 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 18 2021