Tourbillion

 By Bruce Shawkey

Although the Swiss jeweled-lever industry now developed simpler ways of counteracting the effects of gravity, the " tourbillon watch," a complex anti-gravity instrument entirely hand manufactured by Dr. James Pellaton, former director of the technical watchmakers' school in Le Locle, Switzerland, is considered to be the most perfect of its kind. Now in the possession of the Swiss Horological Research Laboratory of Neuchatel, it is valued at about $7,500, which makes it most expensive watch in the world. Only a small fraction of its estimated worth is represented by the cost of the materials and the watch owes its enormous value to the hundreds of hours of expert labor required to make it and to the fact that only a handful of Swiss watchmakers could duplicate the work.

The "tourbillon" watch is called a masterpiece of Swiss designing, a watchmaker's watch. It is designed to counteract the pull of gravity on the moving parts of a watch and this is done by mounting the parts affected by gravity, i.e. the balance wheel, hairspring and escapement, so that they revolve regularly around an axis. The pull of gravity is then equalized and the watch operates the same regardless of its position in relation to the earth's surface. In rigorous tests carried out by the Neuchatel Observatory, the "tourbillon" won a coveted Class A rating for pocket chronometers.