Jaeger-LeCoultre

that Jaeger Lecoultre entered a revived chronometric competition in 2009. the measurements are ongoing and the winner will be declared on 3rd december 09.
What is interesting is that 10 companies an 3 independant watchmakers proposed a total of 16 watches.
What is even more exciting is to see swatch and tissot next t Jaeger-lecoultre and Kari Voutilainen. one would expectthat everybody is in here to win, right?
I am really curious to see how the ETAcalibre will do against some more complexe calibres.

I am personnaly supporting the gyrotourbillon but would not be at all surprised if the watch that wins will carry a much simpler calibre.

www.chronometrie2009.ch
(the website is in french but you will be able to understand easily the list of competitors if you click on "les concurrents"

Thanks for the post !
Where are Rolex, and the Valjoux 7750 mods ?

... so sorry! I mean moneymaker...

digging in the details of the competition, I saw that they put the list of countries allowed to compete (by this I mean that calibre assembled and tuned in a country of their list can compete).

surprisingly Japan is not in the list, keeping away seiko from the competition. I think this is at least mean if not stupid. One has to remember that the chronometric competitions died when seiko brought the first quartz calibre to the competition in the early 70s and beat all other mechanical calibres by a factor of 5 or 10.

here, they limited it to mechnical calibre, therefore logically the quartz and springdrive would not enter the game, but, nevertheless, the fear of some smaching Grand Seiko is probably big.

despite this twist I am looking forward to the results and I hope that the gyro blows everybody away, although I think the El Primero is a very strong contestant.

…” would not be at all surprised if the watch that wins will carry a much simpler caliber” too.

 

My 7750 TAG Carrera Tachymetre has been running significantly better than my 938 JLC RDM

 

Marcelo

This message has been edited by marcelo on 2009-09-18 11:13:45 This message has been edited by marcelo on 2009-09-18 11:14:10

ETA and IMHO the Rolex are another category than "others"
Why ? The production volume. That's the secret. But today, the sec/day is not the n°1 view for chioce a "haute horlogie" piece. If you don't agree this, buy a Rolex or COSC ETA, and wear proudly.

is as old as horology itself. We do continue to see today that a significant portion of the R&D of the watch brands go into making the calibre more accurate. Today it is with silicon or graphen or creating new or revided types of escapment. and Breguet patented the tourbillon 200y ago because he wanted to improve the overall accuracy of the watch. The Quartz tidal wave was also to propose more accurate timekeepers.

The competition is within certain rules (the odd one is to keep Japan aside) but the goal is simple: measure precisely which watch is the most accurate after a series of various tests. It does not mean that you would experience the same accuracy when wearing the watch on the wrist for 24h but it is surely somehow related.

What makes this particular edition interesting is the variety of competitors, from independant well known for the quality of their craftmanship to companies that mass-produce calibres and everything in between.

the results I have seen for the gyrotourbillon accuracy is mind blowing (a fraction of second per day in pretty much any position), so I am looking forward to see the results of the others.