At Baselworld 2017, Bulgari unveiled the world’s thinnest watch with a self-winding movement, a timepiece we will be exploring soon on WatchTime.com. As we’ve seen in recent years, watch brands are pulling out all the stops to achieve new records not only in thinness, but in the level of complication and complexity that they pack into those super-slim movements and cases. Here are seven recent examples of timepieces that (at least for the moment) have set records for thinness in their respective categories.
1. World’s Thinnest Minute Repeater (Current – 2016):

Bulgari Octo Finissimo Minute Repeater

Introduced at Baselworld 2016, the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Minute Repeater, now claims the title of smallest striking watch on the market, a title that had been held previously by Jaeger-LeCoultre (see below). Striking watches carry several specific construction constraints, and require a high level of expertise to achieve the challenging goal of an intense, crystal-clear chime with a uniform, consistent cadence when the mechanism is activated. Usually, such a watch tends to be on the large side, due to the need for sufficiently generous interior volume for optimal diffusion of the sound within the case, thus ensuring ideal acoustic quality. Bulgari, however, set out to achieve this ?perfect sound? within the smallest possible space. To this end, the brand developed the in-house BVL Caliber 362, which measures just 3.12 mm thick, and created a case whose...