Each year the annual Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Geneve awards are presented to recognise the best in the year of Swiss watch making. This year, TAG Heuer is nominated in three categories: Men’s Watches (TAG Heuer 300 SLR) Design and Concept watches (TAG Heuer Monaco V4) and Sport Watches (TAG Heuer Monaco 24).

So far, so good you might think- but take a look at the Monaco V4 that is nominated. Here, for the first time is the second version of the Monaco V4- a Rose Gold edition.

The new V4 (Ref. WAW2040) is limited to 60 watches and will retail for CHF90,000- so this is the not the every-man’s V4 that we’ve has been waiting for!

To my eyes, the black dial and Rose Gold finish is a far more coherent design than the original Platinum Monaco V4. Regular readers will recall that Calibre 11 speculated about this watch back in April, when Lewis Hamilton was negotiating his World Championship prize with Jean-Christophe Babin.

TAG Heuer have released some fantastic Rose Gold watches over the last couple of years (Carrera Calibre 360, Grand Carrera), but this one sits well and truly at the top of the list.

Having bought you the first images of the Pendulum movement, we can now share with you the very first photos of the TAG Heuer Grand Carrera Pendulum and its secret- this watch does not have a hairspring to regulate the movement- instead, it uses magnets.

This explains why TAG Heuer have joined forces with Tesla, because Telsa is not only the name of a car company, but also the name of the units of magnetic force- so a nice tie-in.

The Pendulum concept started about four years ago and is still in concept form- expect it to take a while for the technology to be ready for production, just as was the case with the Monaco V4 movement.

The case is PVD-coated and weighs in at an impressive 47mm- so much for watches getting smaller! The movement of the pendulum looks fantastic and there is a see-through window on the pendulum so that you can see the workings.

One of the key challenges with the design was ensuring the linear response from the regulator- this is relatively simple with a hair spring, but as you’d know when you put two magnets together, the magnetic pull does not increase in a linear fashion, but exponentially.

Press release
TAG Heuer, the leading pioneer of Swiss watchmaking innovation since 1860, reinvents the heart of the mechanical movement

Developed and constructed in-house by TAG Heuer
A major watchmaking innovation!

During its 150 years at the forefront of the Swiss avant-garde, TAG Heuer has written some of the most important chapters in the history of mechanical watchmaking — from the oscillating pinion patented in 1887 to the groundbreaking 1/100th-of-a-second precision of the Calibre 360 chronograph in 2005.

Technological advancements like this point to one underlying truth: TAG Heuer does not innovate for innovation’s sake. The brand’s passion for the avant-garde is an essential element of its DNA and history, and the driving force of its R&D strategy.

TAG Heuer R&D objectives in the 3rd millennium: to progressively re-invent the three elementary principles of watchmaking — energy, transmission and regulation

Like most machines, a mechanical watch movement involves four basic operations: energy is generated, stored, transmitted and regulated. For centuries, these constants of mechanical watchmaking have been performed by three complementary blocks: a power storage system with cylindrical barrel, a transmission system with pinions and gears, and a regulation system with balance wheel, spiral hairspring and escapement.

With the TAG Heuer Monaco V4 Concept Watch, TAG Heuer substituted the traditional pinion and gear transmission with a belt-driven mechanical transmission. An award-winning BaselWorld concept watch in 2004, the Monaco V4 became a commercial reality at the end of 2009, when it was successfully launched in limited edition of 150 “Haute Horlogerie” pieces.

Now, to mark its 150th anniversary, TAG Heuer proudly introduces the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept, the first-ever mechanical movement without hairspring.

The Pendulum. © TAG Heuer

TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept: a radical “out of the box” rethink of mechanical time regulation design and performance

Since the creation of the Galileo-inspired hairspring by Christiaan Huygens in 1675, the regulating organ of all mechanical watches has been based on a balance wheel and spiral-shaped torsion hairspring system. A coiled strip of fine metal alloy, the hairspring provides the torque necessary for the balance wheel to oscillate and regulate its frequency. Over the centuries, it has been significantly modified and improved. Charles-Edouard Guillaume (1861-1938), the son of a Swiss watchmaker, discovered new alloys (Invar and Elinvar) that significantly reduced the metal spring’s thermal sensitivity. Guillaume won the Nobel Prize for Physics for this invention in 1920.

With the challenge of temperature diminished by Guillaume’s alloys, the spiral hairspring regulation system came to dominate mechanical movement design. However, the mechanical hairspring has three serious design limitations: a mass that makes it sensitive to gravity and deforms its geometry; a material that makes it sensitive to thermal expansion; and a divergence between its geometric centre and its centre of mass. These may cause isochronal issues that can be technically and physically improved but never completely eliminated.

Overcoming the design limitations inherent in the traditional regulation system by eliminating the need for a spiral hairspring was the first challenge TAG Heuer set for itself. The second was keeping the movement 100% mechanical: conventional watchmaking wisdom has always held that a mechanical watch without spiral hairspring would necessarily require another energy source for its regulation.

In the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept, the traditional hairspring is replaced by an “invisible” or virtual spring derived from magnets. The complete device forms a harmonic oscillator. The magnetic field, generated by means of 4 high-performance magnets and controlled in 3D through complex geometric calculations, provides the linear restoring torque necessary for the alternative oscillations of the balance wheel. The oscillating period of the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept is resistant to changes from perturbing forces, which is what makes it an exceptionally good timekeeping device. The movement built with this revolutionary oscillator is fully mechanical and does not contain any electronics or driven actuators. The magnets generate a constant field over decades.

TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept, the world’s first oscillator in a mechanical movement without hairspring, beats at 43,200/hour (6 Hertz) — making it a superlative representative of TAG Heuer’s unique mastery of high frequencies and ultimate precision. It requires no additional components and is based on physical magnetic properties. It gets its name from an earlier Huygens creation — the pendulum clock of 1657.

© TAG Heuer

TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept: A potent new technical milestone in mechanical movements

The TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept not only overturns 3 centuries of conventional watchmaking tradition, it also represents in and of itself an enormous technological leap forward. In a classical spiral hairspring system, the effect of gravity due to mass is a dominant issue. With the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept, the problem no longer even exists. There is no loss of amplitude and the movement’s frequency can be modulated on a very large spectrum of frequency without overburdening the power supply. The result is a significant increase in precision (division of time) and performance (frequency accuracy and stability).

The TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept is the first-ever magnetic oscillator without hairspring capable of providing a restoring torque comparable to that of a hairspring: the basic principle of the Swiss anchor escapement is therefore unchanged, but the absence of mass and therefore inertia allows for much larger frequencies. Theoretical precision is significantly higher as it is possible to oscillate at small angles (the elementary principle of oscillator accuracy) without altering the return torque and, especially important, without causing geometric deformations.

TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept Project: 5 years of R&D effort

The TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept project involved in-house TAG Heuer R&D engineers and watchmakers working in an extensive research partnership with microsystems research experts at the Integrated Actuators Laboratory (LAI), part of the Microtechnics Institute of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).

Starting from scratch has required advanced digital simulation coupled with physical analysis (mechanics, magnetism and thermal behaviour). It took TAG Heuer’s R&D team 3 years of intensive digital 3D simulation research to precisely orient the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept’s virtual magnetic spring.

An old adversary still remains: the magnets are sensitive to temperature. The challenge facing TAG Heuer now is to discover the magnetic equivalent of invar-elinvar: to, in a sense, add Charles Edouard Guillaume’s accomplishments to those of Christiaan Huygens. Once addressed, the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept will no longer be a concept but a new milestone in mechanical regulator technology. As with the V4, this may take years, but TAG Heuer is committed to taking on the challenge and pursuing the epic Pendulum adventure.

TAG Heuer does not claim that the Pendulum Concept will take the place of traditional, high-quality Swiss hairsprings in mainstream mechanical movements, but rather offer a “Haute Horlogerie” alternative, which could lead to high-end limited editions in the future, as was the case with the Monaco V4’s movement transmission innovations.

© TAG Heuer

TAG Heuer Grand Carrera Pendulum Concept: a breakthrough movement housed inside a motor sports-inspired icon of premium luxury

The Grand Carrera is the utmost prestigious incarnation of TAG Heuer’s unrivalled motor racing heritage and passion for avant-garde design and technology. Launched in 2007 and inspired by modern GT cars, the series was an instant success, widely acclaimed by watch and motor-sports enthusiasts for its effortless, at-a-glance readability and superlative aesthetics.

The design of the TAG Heuer Grand Carrera Pendulum Concept is faithful to the exclusive luxury codes of the Grand Carrera: polished and angled edges, curved and facetted horns on both sides of black titanium covered steel case. The special dial aperture at 9 o’clock allows to admire the beating heart of TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept’s avant-garde movement.

Inside and out, this is a superlative timepiece, a noble extension of the Grand Carrera collection and a worthy showcase of a breakthrough advancement in watchmaking technology.

The TAG Heuer Grand Carrera Pendulum Concept opens a promising new era in watchmaking, with potentially powerful new movements precise to ever-smaller fractions of time. The effect on future watches and chronographs design and function may be huge — and TAG Heuer once again leads the way even though it will take years before it will become a commercial realty. Patents have been filed and are pending.For More Info Check out www.octove.com

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I decided to look into one of the Horological Machine Number 3 variant watch to illustrate just how creative MB&F can be with their models and marketing practices. MB&F has offered a range of HM3 based models, including this which is the HM3 Chocolate Frog.

Let's look at the HM3 Chocolate Frog. This is a brown PVD coated version of the HM3 Frog, which is a variant of the original HM3 that i first covered here. Aside from being a nice looking watch in chocolate crown and gold, MB&F offered the limited edition of 10 pieces for sale through the enthusiast watch forum the PuristsPro. Something like this had never been done, a very high-end watch with a retail price of $79,000 being sold exclusively through a non-retailer website. MB&F went straight to a place that had been good to it in the past, and offered a special piece direct to the consumer. MB&F was originally skeptical of the idea, believing that not many pieces would sell, but most have so far, and they haven't even been delivered yet. With the HM3 Chocolate Frog MB&F took a calculated gamble on experimenting with an alternative way of selling watches using the internet through fan-based communities and it succeeded.

While it won't happen right away, the result of the Chocolate Frog sales experiment will not only further add importance and credibility to online sales, but it will reinforce the fact that working with importance voices and communities of internet based watch lovers can be a powerful way of selling timepieces. MB&F will likely continue to look strongly at internet based sales, and other brands will follow suit. It further helps dispel the myth that no one buys watches they can't see and touch. Collectors have been ordering limited edition watches for years that they never see before the pieces are built, and a lot of the industry is based on the concept of pre-order financing. The lesson is that consumers will buy watches sight unseen granted they are able to validate the purchase via a combination of the brand having a very strong reputation and the product some manner or endorsement or approval from trusted opinion leaders.

For more info on the Horological Machine 3: Chocolate Frog, log on to www.octove.com and learn more about this unique timepiece.

Rebellious individualism is an incredibly powerful creative force. It is a force that has been responsible for some of – if not all – the greatest art in history. Art often thrives under adversity, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that during WW2, artists found their canvases in unusual places – such as on the nose cones of aircraft.

That led to a thriving aesthetic genre called ‘nose art’, which often expressed rebellious individualism coupled with a light-hearted jab at the establishment – that’s a winning combination at MB&F!

HM4 Razzle Dazzle and Double Trouble take their inspiration from, and pay homage to, these airborne masterpieces. And, as they provocatively fly by, the cheeky pin-ups also take a playful poke at the establishment.

Although the military never officially sanctioned nose art, it unofficially approved it as a morale-booster in the harsh environments because allowing a little individual expression went a long way towards increasing pride and spirit. The portrayal of women in nose art can be best characterised as free-spirited and daring and in general, the further away from headquarters, the racier the compositions.

To create the vivacious artwork of Razzle Dazzle and Double Trouble, the titanium fuselage of HM4 Thunderbolt has been carefully machined out for the design so that the paint and its protective layers of lacquer finish flush with the surface, so minimising the risk of damage.

To set the scene and provide further authenticity, real titanium rivets have been hand applied to the Thunderbolt’s titanium fuselage. The dual dials glow and sparkle with a warm vintage patina created using a special blend of paint mixed with cream-coloured Super-LumiNova and very fine copper particles. The period look is further enhanced by the distinctive strap, which has been crafted from leather obtained from genuine antique Swiss military bags.

Razzle Dazzle and Double Trouble’s authentic vintage accoutrements adorn a thoroughly modern, state-of-the-art Horological Machine featuring a 311-component, in-house movement developed specifically and exclusively for the Thunderbolt.

Razzle Dazzle and Double Trouble are ebullient limited editions of eight pieces each. And as each mildly subversive illustration is individually hand painted, each is unique.

For more info, log on to www.octove.com and check out more cool new horological machines.