With hundreds of patents and movements to its name, you'd think that Jaeger-LeCoultre would coast on its past achievements but no. This is Watches and Wonder. This is where you present the best for the year. It's the perfect stage to show your peers why you've earned the title as the "watchmaker's watchmaker". Thus, for this year's Watches and Wonder, JLC flexes its complications muscles with three Duometre models: the Duometre Chronograph Moon; the Duometre Quantieme Lunaire and the Duometre Heliotourbillon Perpetual. It is the last model that strikes our fancy.
The Duometre model is a marvel in the history of movements. Before its advent, any watch with a secondary function (like a chronograph where you keep time and act as a stopwatch) would draw energy that also powers the drivetrain and that leads to a loss of balance amplitude. In short, it slows the ticks. JLC came up with an elegant solution. One that doubles the barrels and gear trains—one for timekeeping and the other for complications and displays; all linked to a single escapement.
Layering on that excellence with another is the addition of a new tourbillon construction in the Duometre Heliotourbillon Perpetual. JLC's features a new manual Calibre 388 (in-house, of course) with a tourbillion that rotates on three axes (a first for the brand).
Supported on ceramic ball bearings to minimise friction and consisting of 163 components weighing less than 0.7 grams, the tourbillon is fitted with a cylindrical hairspring. There are three titanium cages. The first is angled at 90 degrees to the balance wheel; the second is set at 90 degrees to the first; and the third cage is perpendicular to the second and makes a full rotation every minute.
Oh, and did we mention that the multi-axes tourbillon also has a perpetual calendar? A grande date display is set at 3 o’clock. And the year indication has a special mechanism that highlights the last digit of every leap year in red.
Inspired by the Savonette pocket watches, the Duometre Heliotourbillon Perpetual is encased in a gold case. With a pleasing rounded bezel, the timepiece's convex crystal case features an open-worked view of the tourbillon on the left, while on the right, the time display.
Limited to 20 pieces, we suspect that this will be a very expensive investment- *looks at price tag* Yup, USD438,000.00. That sounds about right for a very complicated watch like Jaeger-LeCoultre's Duometre Heliotourbillon Perpetual.
