At the very least, no one saw this coming. The Czapek Antarctique Rattrapante R.U.R. is a limited edition of the brand’s famous reference, with a function indicator in the form of a robot. It all began with the desire of one of the maison’s main shareholders to include a robot inside an Antarctique. But the real narrative thread emerged when digging into the history of the word “robot.” The story is quite amusing: the word was coined a century ago. It was introduced in 1924 in Rossum’s Universal Robots, written three years earlier by the Czech author Karel Čapek. From Capek to Czapek, there was only a “Z” to leap over, which the brand quickly did to bring its Antarctique Rattrapante R.U.R. (for Rossum’s Universal Robots, the original English title) to life. That’s the storytelling.
On the technical side, the robot’s face, positioned at 12 o’clock, displays the chronograph’s functions through its eyes. Red means stopped. Yellow means running. Blue means reset. Chronograph function indicators are not very common in watchmaking – and for good reason: when activated, the chronograph’s action is immediately visible on the dial. The most recent example was the Type 10 by Albishorn, a brand created by Sébastien Chaulmontet, formerly the creative mind behind Arnold & Son movements. That watch also placed its indicator at 12 o’clock and used color codes to show chronograph functions.
A highly technical calibre
The movement of the Antarctique Rattrapante R.U.R. remains the work of Chronode, the company of master watchmaker Jean-François Mojon. It does not differ technically from the other Antarctique Rattrapante calibres. Its principle is unchanged: the split-seconds chronograph makes it possible to measure events that start at the same time but finish successively (such as a car race). The two hands start together, superimposed. A push of the pusher stops one of them, so the elapsed time can be read. The other continues its course. When the first measurement is taken, the stopped hand is released and catches up with the other—hence the name rattrapante. The operation can be repeated as many times as needed. Complex and subtle, the split-seconds mechanism is a delicacy highly prized by collectors. It works by clamping one of the two hands while the other keeps turning.
But the Antarctique Rattrapante R.U.R. goes further: at the heart of the movement, an isolator decouples the two chronograph seconds wheels without creating friction in the rest of the mechanism, greatly reducing disturbances in chronometric performance. With this development, the R.U.R. represents a genuine advance in the construction of split-seconds. And, as with every Antarctique since its creation in 2021, the intricate mechanics of the complication remain visible on the dial.
A watch rated “X”
It is in the design that this piece, limited to 77 examples, truly stands out. The robot at 12 o’clock tops the second column wheel (the first remains visible at 6 o’clock). It is made of titanium, hand-polished, then laser-engraved. Each of its eyes is hand-painted in the three colors.
The indexes, meanwhile, are inspired by the countdown used by the alien Predator in the eponymous films. Connection with the robot? “None!” admits CEO Xavier de Roquemaurel, who borrowed the imagery of a futuristic universe… while playfully twisting it. The Predator’s numerals, already unreadable for humans, have here been redesigned into the shape of an “X,” like Xavier.
