If the preview of the new tourbillon by A. Lange & Söhne is any indicator, the upcoming SIHH promises to be a wonderful fair for Saxony's premier watch brand.
The look of this new tourbillon was inspired by a pocket watch now found in the state museum Mathematics Physics Salon that was made by Johann Heinrich Seyffert (1751-1817). Seyffert, a curator of the above-mentioned museum, made less than 100 timepieces during his lifetime, most of them for the royal Saxon court and various scientists and explorers such as Alexander von Humboldt. The regulator, made in 1807, not only separates the three displays (hours, minutes, seconds) on the dial, but is also driven by chain and fusee in its movement – thus making it the perfect role model for A. Lange & Söhne's newest addition to the Richard Lange family.
One decisive element separates the modern wristwatch from the vintage pocket watch – and every other watch in existence: a cutaway in the seconds subdial (which is intersected by the hours subdial) that reveals the elegant stop-seconds tourbillon at work is outfitted with a a pivoting segment that “disappears” and “reappears” at 12 and 6 o'clock respectively to allow for perfect legibility. This playful function decisively separating this timepiece from any other is achieved by use of a cam wheel positioned at 6 o'clock. The tourbillon (as well as the chain-and-fusee construction that is present in all of Lange's “pour le mérite” timepieces) was made visible by cutting openings in the otherwise closed Glashütte-style three-quarter plate. The tourbillon hacks, which means that when the crown is pulled out to set the time, the balance and the tourbillon are both halted to allow for precise setting to the second. The only other timepiece that is capable of this feat is A. Lange & Söhne's Cabaret Tourbillon, the watch in which Lange's engineers introduced the practical element.
Caliber L072.1 with its more open three-quarter plate measures a stately 33.6 mm in diameter © A. Lange & Söhne
With a power reserve of 36 hours – a generous amount of time when you consider that the aperture flip twice an hour costs the manually wound movement a great deal of energy – the Richard Lange Tourbillon Pour le Mérite in a 41.9 mm platinum case is strictly limited to 100 pieces. In a rose gold case it remains unlimited, though the difficult production process is certain to keep the number of pieces manufactured per year to a minimum.
