Horological Meandering

I was asked recently, as an editorial advisor, my thoughts on tourbillons today. I thought my reply to the EIC might start an interesting discussion here. "Just a few quick knee jerk thoughts on the subject (sorry, limited to a Blackberry for the moment; ... 

One of the points I may add is that the traditional tourbillon almost never was shown on the dial side. And honestly, why the need to show it? Unless.... I agree with the fact that there is the category of the kinetic art such as Haldimann and GF. Both wi... 

and for those of us that understand that tourbillons in practice often don't increase averaged rate stability - the complexity of the escapement introduces more errors than it compensates for, in most cases - those of us who still appreciate and like tour... 

The biggest problem I have with the Tourbillon is that Marketing teams killed the Tourbillon. From the natural sophistication of whzt is by essence a sophistication, we had a marketing product, in most of the cases. The sophistication, vulgarized. A pity.... 

with few exceptions. Eric Coudrey's GyroT is, of course, amazing and of course would fall into both categories (1) and (2a) advancing the technology and SOTA (state of the art), perhaps even (2c) tourbillon as art or abstraction, in the same way as G-F, t... 

"Sophistication, vulgarized." That sells, but it's not something most of us want. The participants on this thread all seem to agree that some tourbillons are worth the trouble. At this stage, their raison d'etre cannot simply be "because it's a tourbillon... 

First we have to face reality. Tourbillons in a wrist watch are not there for the chronometry. Journe once joked that the "best way to improve the performance of his tourbillon was to take out the tourbillon". Actually that was not too much of a joke, sin... 

Hi, Jeff, Thanks for the further thoughts. In reading your comments, I'm not sure we were saying anything different, though it is always nice to read things from another perspective or with different wording, something akin to reading or discussing the sa... 

First, the Tourbillon mechanism was made, if I remember well, for pocket watches: as they remained in a vertical position and still (in theory) in the pocket, making the escapement rotating on the level of where it carries "mistakes" is good for time keep... 

For themselves.

I find the " stream of consciousness" thought process you've used very appealing since it illustrate your raw thoughts, void of editing that could have made your comments too editorial and, in a way, less informative. Very well done! Emil

being respectfully considered is the best way to go for most posts, sometimes, raw unfiltered thoughts are necessary to reset the bullshit meter... Thanks again for your kind words. TM

I offer the thought of comparing whether a tourbillon is useful or not to whether a minute repeater is useful or not. I see in this thread the heart of why we like watches... the history of innovation, how England dominated then lost it all because it stu...