How On Earth Does a Tourbillon Watch Work? | Watchfinder & Co.

the tool beyond is perhaps the most impressive complication in watchmaking it's also not really a complication or is it in a wristwatch particularly useful so what is it how does it work and if it's so useless why are we so obsessed with it you may have heard of a guy called abraham-louis Breguet he was a watchmaker in the 1700s and was kind of a big deal after many things he contributed to the fine mechanical art of watchmaking one of them was the tall beyond if you speak French that means whirlwind if you speak watchmaking it means you're in for a treat let's first understand why the tool beyond exists before we uncover why it doesn't need to when someone like a good friend Monsieur breguet makes a mechanical watch they're harnessing the power of motion in order to tell the time like a row of dominoes a mechanical watch passes motion down a line of parts all fine tuned to make sure that motion stays in check you can see that clearly on this unison are down which the company has kindly skeletonized to demonstrate the point the mainspring coiled up in the barrel at the top turns slowly passing that motion onto a string of gears that feed the hands to represent the passage of time but there's a problem one that took centuries to solve regulation the word regulation brings to mind feelings of order uniformity regimented stability and that's exactly what the escapement in a watch hopes to achieve as anyone who's ever blown up a balloon and let it go will know elastically stored energy is not easily released in a gentle uniform flow left to its own devices it blasts out as fast as it possibly can making a humorous noise as it does and so the escapement brings order to chaos pinching the neck of the balloon and letting energy out in bursts so short and so controlled they would have corporal to Wayne Hicks proud although there have been many ways of doing this the most prevalent is the Swiss lever escapement which combines an escape wheel pallet fork and balance wheel to act as the fingers pinching and releasing the progress of motion through the movement many times per second let's break that process down the pinching part is easy all you need is to Jam the wheels and the mechanism stops the tricky part is getting it going again but in actuality the motion never ceases its merely transferred when the pallet fork which does the jamming is knocked into placed by the escape wheel which gets jammed and the movement is stopped the other end of the pallet Fork also gives the balance wheel a nudge the balance wheel spins one way coiling the balanced spring at its center which then uncoils and spins the balance wheel back again preserving the motion of the movement while it is locked on its return the balance wheel gives the pallet fork a tap unlocking it and starting the whole process over as you can imagine the tolerances involved here are tighter than a supermarket parking space and such delicate masa Nations are very easily influenced by outside forces such as gravity here's where the tour beyond comes in because Harold made breguet had an idea what if he could build an escapement that ignored gravity altogether the tour beyond as breguet proposed it is ridiculous all of that complexity delicacy his plan was to contain it from gravity the thing that keeps us all stuck to the ground that stops the moon floating off into space breguet decided that he would just make it all null and void and if that sounds crazy his plan for achieving it is even crazier he wanted to take the entire escapement all those parts moving in sync together and rotate them not once not twice but perpetually and would you believe it he managed to pull it off in 1795 by hand this tour beyond as he called it really did encapsulate the regulating system of the watch and set it on a spin thereby taking every angle of its action and presenting it to the force of gravity equally effectively canceling it out the complexity of this mechanism remains one of the most impressive to this day and despite not offering any additional functionality is heralded by many as the pinnacle of watchmaking but how does it actually work the impressive display seems impenetrable at first glance but the reality is that it's really surprisingly rather straightforward don't confuse this sentiment with it being easy to make it's not but the efficiency of the design means that Breguet only needed to add one extra step to the standard mechanism rather than have the last wheel in the chain drive the escape wheel it instead turns a cage into which the escapement is fitted this is called the tour beyond cage and is the structure that gives the tour beyond its trademark appearance the connection between the escapement rotating within the cage and the rest of the movement is what's really clever a gear stationary and undriven sits below the tall Beyond cage seemingly doing nothing but peer at the underside of the escape wheel and you'll see that it does indeed serve a purpose hanging from the escape wheel is a small gear and as the tour beyond cage rotates this smaller gear orbits the largest stationary gear which meshes with it making it turn this then spins the escape wheel which drives the escapement itself as normal genius whilst the concept itself is surprisingly simple the complexity comes in the execution when you realize that watchmakers have to consider the talk implications of having a hand that's a bit too big the headache derived from propelling an entire tour beyond around keeping its mass evenly distributed becomes apparent despite being asymmetric it must be completely balanced and as light as possible in the case of this Ulysse now dance skeleton tour beyond the use of silicon and a 170 hour power reserve gives it the poise and grunts it needs to run so why is this fascinating bit of engineering considered null and void well it's simple when breguet had his idea he wasn't thinking about wristwatches he was thinking about pocket watches a pocket watch hangs on end all day balance wheel orientated to the ground like the wheel of a car constantly fighting the pull of gravity a watch it mostly moves about and when it's resting the balance wheel is usually parallel to the ground and less imbalanced by gravity so the tour beyond doesn't really have any work to do but before we all reach for our pitchforks remember this there may be no need for the tour beyond anymore but then there's no need for mechanical watches either so why do these things still very much exist then because in a world of instant information fast food high-flying rat racing social media feeding frenzy never stopping never arrested never breathing they make us take a minute slow down appreciate every tick and every talk and that's got to be a good thing discover more exceptional watches at watch finder dr. dot uk' if you enjoyed this video please like and subscribe if there are any other watches you'd like to see reviewed please let us know in 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Channel: Watchfinder & Co.

Views: 1,299,217

Keywords: hodinkee, swiss watches, watches, watch, watchmaking, watch review, luxury, lifestyle, men's fashion, review, rolex, breitling, omega, ulysse nardin, tourbillon, asmr, ulysse nardin skeleton, ulysse nardin skeleton tourbillon, ulysse nardin tourbillon, ulysse nardin watches, watchbox, tourbillon watch, tourbillon watches, how does a tourbillon work, what is a tourbillon watch, sugess tourbillon, what is a tourbillon, tourbillon watch review, tourbillon movement, flying tourbillon, g shock

Id: ZUTXVl2B7dY

Length: 8min 35sec (515 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 18 2019