Why This Obsolete Mechanism Makes Watches More Expensive | So Expensive | Business Insider

A tourbillon (French for "whirlwind") is a centuries-old mechanism built inside some of the world's most expensive watches. It was originally designed to improve the accuracy of pocket watches by rotating the escapement and balance wheel to help counter the effects of gravity.

Today, collectors consider tourbillon watches works of fine art. The construction and assembly of the mechanism is very time-consuming and requires extreme precision and patience. Tourbillon watches' complex design, combined with their limited production, contributes to their exclusivity and high price tags.

Remy Cools, an independent watchmaker based near Lake Annecy in France, is working on his second limited-edition release of 36 tourbillon watches, called the Tourbillon Atelier, which will sell for about $172,000 each.

On the lower end, you may find some entry-level tourbillon watches for $30,000. However, most tourbillon watches from reputable brands range from $100,000 to several million dollars.

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Why This Obsolete Mechanism Makes Watches More Expensive | So Expensive | Business Insider

[johnleonard]

The fact this man is building all of this from raw material to working parts and knows how to do all the design machine set up and the machining itself with all the different machines is simply amazing.

[thefallen]

what I find truly amazing is that watchmakers centuries ago were able to not only design this movement, but produce them without any of the modern machinery available today.

[mattseaton]

I know it's largely irrelevant to the 'value' of a watch, but having a tourbillon in the movement doesn't add anywhere close to the cost recovery that a watchmaker would lead you to believe. A mechanical chronograph movement is vastly more complex than a tri-hand watch with a tourbillon, it's just used as a luxury marker these days really.

[alihasanabdullah]

A quartz oscillator is at least a few magnitudes more accurate than traditional mechanical movement. Yet mechanical watches are valued higher. Accuracy never had anything to do with the price. A tourbillon takes more work, therefore is more exclusive, hence priced higher.

[gaveintothedarkness]

Its only a tourbillon if it comes from the tourbillon region of France, otherwise its called "sparkling watch spring"

Yes I know they are not in France.

[johnraffaelli]

The Chinese Tongji movement at 12:33 was not the best example to use for this kind of work lol. Amazing talent, way to go Remy!

[darthandeddeu]

I love that salesperson at the end. Yes push those independents!

[cyrilio]

Amazing how Remy has mastered this art at such a young age. Amazing

[LaniakeaDenizen]

Mechanical engineering really is an art form.

But I'll stick with my Casio haha.

[EasyGrowsIt]

What’s amazing is these little parts were manufactured hundreds of years ago in older mechanical watches without CNC machines.

[cafemolido]

To these young kids dedicating themselves to the craft: KUDOS & RESPECT.

[MarkJoseph-vvpj]

I have been collecting medium to high end watches for a while, but after watching this presentation I feel like a serf.

[watcheswithabdullah]

Watches aren't expensive because of the Tourbillon (which can be nowadays found in $1000 watches), but because of several other factors like the hand engraving, hand-beveling, and the sheer number of watches produced by a specific brand. Independent watchmakers will charge higher because of limited resources available to them, in addition to lack of manpower. Larger corporate brands will be able to mass-produce commercial pieces at a relatively cheaper price, but can't be compared to the extreme high-end pieces in terms of finishing and handcrafting processes.

[NunoxFerreira]

Superb work! I'm lucky to say that my job is"Angleur " in one of the oldest Switzerland's watchmakers. Beveling is a time consuming and delicate procedure, but like all other surface treatments (like perlage, satinage, cerclage, guillochage, côtes de Genève etc) the aestetic of a mechanical watch is largely improved.

[ChairmanMeow]

One of the few luxuries I actually can see the value behind. These things are works of art. Also that Remy guy is incredible, to know how to do it from step one to the end, on multiple machines, is impressive.

[ucheucheuche]

I stare at motherboard resistors the way watch enthusiasts stare at tourbillions.

[jfess]

I have never had steady hands. I am amazed at the dexterity of these people.

[autovive]

You can buy a $5 million watch but you can't buy time.😅

[RobbieHatley]

I had to give this video a Thumb-Down, because it is riddled with misinformation. This video is mistaken on _many_ points:

1. No, hair springs do not move in the way shown in your animation; instead, they expand-only when rotating one direction, and contract-only when rotating the other direction. This is because one end is fixed to the fixed balance cock whereas the other end is fixed to the rotating balance wheel.

2. No, hair springs to do interface with the escape wheel. Instead, hair springs apply bidirectional torques to a balance wheel, which turns an impulse jewel, which nudges a pallet fork, which interfaces with the escape wheel. It is the jewels of the pallet fork striking the teeth of the escape wheel which creates the “tick, tock, tick, tock” sound of escapement-based clocks and watches.

3. No, tourbillons are not “obsolete”; they serve the same purpose they always did.

4. No, mechanical pocket watches have not been replaced by mechanical wrist watches. Instead, most people opt for smartphones and/or quartz-timed electronic wrist watches for their time-keeping. But all four kinds of time-keeping devices (mechanical pocket watches, mechanical wrist watches, electronic wrist watches, smartphones) are still in common use, along with many others.

5. No, “modern wrist watches” are not primarily mechanical; most of them are electronic with no moving parts.

6. No, wrist watches do not “primarily sit horizontally”. Firstly, they don't “sit”; people move around! And secondly, they don't spend all their time in the same position; people have their wrists in _many different positions_ throughout their busy work days.

7. No, tourbillons are not “for accuracy”; people who need high accuracy use smartphones or internet-connected computers; either will tell time to within 0.1 second of UTC. Instead, tourbillons are for accuracy _within the universe of mechanical time pieces_, and for the joy of owning, looking at, and using a beautifully-engineered mechanical marvel. People don't spend $300, 000 on a Grand Seiko Kodo or $8, 000 on Horage Tourbillon 1 for split-second accuracy (they could get much better accuracy from a $15 Casio); instead, people buy those watches because of their beauty, and because of their all-mechanical steampunk mystique, and because they manage to eke-out 1-second-per-day accuracy from purely-mechanical systems containing no modern high-technology parts at all. Just because nearly everything these days is made of plastic and controlled by electronics doesn't mean one's watch needs to be; _that_ is the whole point of mechanical time pieces and tourbillons.

8. No, tweezers are not “pliers”; anyone who has used either tweezers _or_ pliers should know better than that.

9. No, it is _not_ true that “tourbillons do not make timepieces more accurate [than they would be without them]”. Tourbillons increase accuracy by decreasing the slowing-down or speeding-up effects of the vector of gravity, by constantly _changing_ the vector of gravity relative to the balance wheel, thus causing those effects to mostly “cancel out”.

10. No, the sapphire crystals (two, not one) on a tourbillon (or any other balance wheel) are not visual “highlights”; instead, they are necessary functional parts of any rotating watch part requiring ultra-low friction. They are used because sapphire is the second-hardest substance on Earth after diamond, and hence brass-on-sapphire lubricated with a tiny drop of synthetic oil provides a near-zero-friction pivot. Thus the description “21 jewels” engraved on a watch is not bragging about jewelry, but rather, bragging about low friction.

I'm not a watchmaker, but even *_I_* as a collector and hobbyist can see those 10 obvious blunders in your video; a professional watchmaker would probably see many more errors and be even more emphatic in pointing them out. So, I suggest doing more research before making and posting videos, because this one wasn't very good (it's riddled with errors).

[DidNotFinish.]

these are he types of ceos i respect, the ones that still are enthusiastic for the craft