The new Girard-Perregaux Minute Repeater Tri-Axial Tourbillon is a technical triumph for the house
In a time when brands are dusting off heritage collections and creating vintage-inspired watches, Girard-Perregaux is, well, no different. The Laureato collection launched in 2016 was, after all, the resurrection of an iconic watch for the house. But the year 2018 sees the brand highlighting a different part of its horological heritage—that of musical complications.
Some may remember Girard-Perregaux’s series of three grand complication watches, called the “Opera”, produced during the late 1990s to 2010. Opera One was a minute repeater with a Westminster chime on four gongs; Opera Two was based on Opera One, with an added perpetual calendar; while Opera Three featured a perpetual calendar and a movement that allowed the wearer to play Mozart’s A Little Night Music and Tchaikovsky’s No Great Love on demand. All three were limited edition and highly coveted. A logical step might then be to reissue or revamp the Opera watches, but Girard-Perregaux has chosen to do otherwise, reaching deeply into its technical hatbox and coming up with a new musical wonder, the Minute Repeater Tri-Axial Tourbillon.
(Related: 8 Things You Need To Know About The Girard-Perregaux 1966 WW.TC)
As the name suggests, the watch features a minute repeater with a tourbillon that rotates on three different axes. The tri‑axial tourbillon is rare in other brands and was only recently launched in 2014 by Girard‑Perregaux, but neither complication is newfangled. The interesting part of this watch lies in the technical execution of these two complications.
First, the tri-axial tourbillon. Like its predecessors, this tourbillon does a full rotation at different rates on each of its three axes—two minutes, one minute and 30 seconds—allowing the balance wheel to occupy a maximum number of points around an imaginary sphere. A tourbillon was first invented for upright pocket watches to tackle the effects of gravity on the escapement system, which would make the time less accurate. A tourbillon would correct this by mounting the escapement and balance wheel in a rotating cage, which would then not have gravity pull upon it at a specific place for long periods of time. A multi-axis tourbillon would presumably compound this effect and reduce the effect of gravity even further—of course, it is also much more difficult to construct than the average tourbillon. Its efficacy in increasing the accuracy of wristwatches is debatable, but it is largely agreed that the tri-axial tourbillon is a technical triumph and beautiful to lay your eyes on.