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| The Oxford Dictionary tells us the word invent comes from the Latin invenio which means to come upon or discover. It all sounds a bit random, slightly fortuitous, like finding a gold nugget in a field. Today we are talking about a couple of gentlemen who describe themselves as 'first and foremost inventors'. However, with their team, they are totally dedicated to banishing randomness and chance from their life's work: taming the telling of time. Their inventions are watches. Their enemy is gravity. Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey are two of the brightest stars in the centuries old firmament of Swiss watchmaking. The Greubel Forsey adventure officially begins in 2004 although they have been working together for almost 20 years. Robert was born into a watchmaking family in Alsace, France, Stephen was born in St Albans, England and grew up observing his father's passion for precise engineering. He developed his skills in antique clock restoration, including as Head of the prestigious Watch Restoration department at Asprey's of London, then joined Renaud & Pape in Switzerland where Robert, after working as a prototypist on complications, including a successful period at IWC, was then managing director and partner. In 1999 |
they started work on a new generation of tourbillon, the tiny rotating wheel that had been regulating watches against the forces of gravity since the early nineteenth century. In 2004 they unveiled to an astonished watch community the Double Tourbillon 30. This has a second wheel within a wheel, set at 30 degrees. Whatever position the watch is in, this innovation? helps cancel out the effects of gravity which can disturb the accuracy of the timepiece. This was their First Invention. Their Second, even more ambitious in the pursuit of accuracy, called the Quadruple Tourbillon, featured four asynchronous wheels. The Third Invention, the Tourbillon 24 Secondes Incline, revisits a single tourbillon, but in an ultra-light inclined cage rotating with high angular velocity. That's the physics, then there is the art. They love you to look at their work, so each of these inventions, when incorporated into the watch you wear, are lovingly on display. Cutaway panels allow you to waste many minutes of your day marvelling at the sheer beauty in the beating heart of you watch. In November 2009...
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