When Piaget announced that it was releasing the world’s thinnest automatic watch at SIHH this year, it didn’t surprise anyone. In the constant struggle over being a horological record holder, Piaget has been a dominant force in the pursuit of ultra-thinness with only Bulgari as a competitor. What no one expected, however, was that Piaget would be competing with itself during the fair by introducing the Piaget Altiplano Ultimate Concept, which blows the one-month-old Piaget Altiplano Ultimate Automatic out of the water. The hand-wound Ultimate Concept measures in at only 2 mm. 2 mm! For reference, the self-winding Ultimate Automatic came in at 4.3 mm and 2017’s Bulgari Octo Finissimo Automatic (the previous record holder) at 5.15 mm thick. At 2 mm, this new concept timepiece is basically the same size as the hand-wound Caliber 9P movement that Piaget revealed at Baselworld in 1960, which is thought of as the watershed moment for the pursuit of ultra-thinness. Side view of the 2 mm watch.
Piaget’s R&D team worked for four years on building out the construction for this watch. The first problem associated with a watch this skinny" Making sure it doesn’t snap in two. To solve this, Piaget developed a cobalt-based alloy that provides optimum rigidness to the case which serves as both the exterior of the watch and the baseplate for the movement. The watch’s crystal measures in at a breathtaking 0.2 mm and five total patents have bee...