F.P. Journe

markkeenan
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Are we going to get some info from FP Journe on the Centigraph at some point?

I completely understand that he has been very busy with the Paris Boutique, but there are a lot of unanswered questions on the exact workings of the Centigraph, and judging from the amount of posts, significant interest in these answers.

Journe has positioned himself IMO amongst the finest watchmakers in the world, and has been able to attract a following, not only by inventing and making amazing timepieces, but by is almost academic approach to the discipline. This has largely been cultivated by his openness and transparency in his work, and people, I know I do, have become very suduced by this highly personal and perfectionist approach.

It would be wonderful if Mr journe, or someone from the firm, could continue this openness and enlighten us a little further on the centigraph's mechanism - There are some very clever people on these forums, and even they acknowledge there is still a lot we must not still understand about it.

It does seem to be a very intersting movement indeed and clearly why it must have won the recent Grand Prix de Geneve award, so I a not concerned that the "wool has been pulled over our eyes" as some posts were claiming at all. I looked at the panel of judges at the award ceremony, and they seem like a very informed and knowledgable group IMO. Therefore if they are happy with its claims, I certainly am but, am still very confused about some basic things.

Some simple questions are:

• Why does the flying second hand move in 1/16 sec intervals and not 1/6 sec intervals?
• Can it me as easily stopped within these intervals, or is there a higher probabiliy that it will be at 1/6th of a sec or 1/16th interval, if not why?
• How constant is the movement during one rotation of the scond hand?
• If a controled experiment were to be run, say by filming the watch running continuosly with a digital clock running in the background and the film were to be started and paused rapidly, would the time differences on the digital clock be the same or close to the dial readout.

I am really looking forward to whether some additional info can be released - it would rather re-complete by perfect opinion of the brand to date.

Thank you in advance

Mark