Zenith?s latest watch not only claims to be the most accurate mechanical watch ever made with a revolutionary new escapement, but according to the physicist behind it, it also signals a renewed scientific approach to watchmaking at LVMH.

by James Buttery

“When I said four years ago it was possible to regulate a mechanical watch by replacing 30 components with one, watchmakers here said ?he is totally crazy, it?s just totally impossible?.? We are sat in Jean-Claude Biver?s office at TAG Heuer in La Chaux de Fonds, some 20 minutes drive from Zenith?s historic manufacture in Le Locle, and TAG Heuer?s general manager Guy Sémon is attempting to explain how much things have changed at LVMH watchmaking under Biver?s stewardship.
Sémon, the man responsible for the new Zenith Defy Lab, is quick to state that he is not, nor will he ever be, a watchmaker despite having devised the most advanced watches TAG Heuer has ever produced. He is a physicist and an engineer (as well as a former jet pilot for the French Navy).
 The Zenith Defy Lab sees a regulator that includes the functionality of balance wheel, hairspring and anchor in a single component etched from a sheet of silicon.
The circular disc, almost the diameter of the entire calibre, is secured to the movement and oscillates about its centre using three arms, each comprising a beam and a mass. Being silicon, the regulator doesn?t suffer from the effects of friction nor require lubrication, but it is susceptible to ...