John Arnold was a watchmaker working in the late 1700s, and, together with Abraham-Louis Breguet, he did a lot to shape modern watches, introducing inventions such as the overcoil balance spring, and working with the great French watchmaker on innovations such as the tourbillon. The very first tourbillon movement was actually built by Breguet and…
This watch, in a 46mm red gold case, 12.28 mm thick, has a lot of traditional watchmaking features, but its open-dial design gives it a modern appearance. The design is cleverly laid out with perfect symmetry, revealing how energy flows from the first mainspring barrel (on the right) on to the second barrel on the…
One of the features of a mechanical watch is that the seconds hand doesn’t tick seconds, but seems to move in a near-constant sweep. On closer examination, you see that it moves in small pulses, each much less than a second. A quartz watch, on the other hand, ticks one second at a time. The…