Piaget cracks another ultra thin record by building upon the concept that gave birth to the 900P

by James Buttery

Bulgari?s claim on the world?s thinnest automatic watch – held by our Issue 83 cover star, the GPHG-winning Octo Finissimo Automatic – didn?t last for long. It held ultra thin bragging rights for just eight months before we were shown a working example of its successor by none other than Piaget.
Piaget of course has a historical connection with ultra thin watchmaking, having developed the barely-there 9P handwound movement (2mm) in 1957 and the 12P automatic movement (2.35mm) in 1960. The maison has produced some 25 ultra thin movements since then.

Its latest record-breaker, the Altiplano Ultimate Automatic 910P, is the next logical advancement upon a previous record-breaker the 900P. That model – which we look at in full here – earned its place in the pantheon of slim watches with the revolutionary trick of doing away with the standard mainplate and bridge ?Lepine? architecture set down by watchmaker Jean-Antoine Lepine in the 18th Century. Instead Piaget built the movement directly into the caseback creating a watch just 3.65mm thick. When it comes to Piaget?s 9xxP approach it?s impossible to talk about movement and case thicknesses separately as the two elements have been merged into one.
But while the 900p is a manually wound movement, the 910P is an automatic. Piaget – which celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Altip...