The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I as you know am full of questions some seem crazy but i genuinely am seeking information as it arises.......a very common word and type of watch has made me need to ask....(sorry for being thick) "tourbillon".........what does it mean in watch circles especially Breitling

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- An optional feature of a watch movement designed to make the movement more accurate by counteracting the effects of gravity on the balance wheel.

- Typically only found on very expensive - high five-figure or six-figure - watches.

- Only found in one Breitling model - the Mulliner Tourbillon, made in very small numbers to customers' specifications, to the tune of $150,000.

- One of the most common tells in fake Breitlings.

It literally translates from the French as whirlwind, but it is a device that is intended to improve the accuracy of a watch.

When watches were all pocket watches and stored in a fixed position (upright in the pocket) the balance was vertical which meant that the vibrations were 'uphill and downhill' for want of a better description. The tourbillon was a device created by Abraham Louis Breguet that moved the escapement (balance and controller - usually a pallet fork) into a 'cage'. This cage then rotated through 360 degrees, usually (but not always) once a minute. By rotating the escapement you compensated for the fixed balance position and in theory improved accuracy.

There are variations on the theme, and technically to be called a tourbillon the cage has to be driven by a specific wheel in the running train, but the countless variations today amount to the same type of device.

In the last 20 years or so the tourbillon has become the way that a manufacture demonstrates their mastery of watchmaking, even though in the modern wristwatch the value of a tourbillon (which was always questionable) is fairly irrelevant from an accuracy standpoint.

Breitling's Mulliner Tourbillon is the only production tourbillon to carry their name, and that was not built by them. Some of the unique pocket watches for Basel have been tourbillons - no idea who developed those. I am sure that Breitling are considering an in house tourbillon as part of their move in house, though largely I suspect as a symbolic gesture to demonstrate that they can.

Nice cut and paste answer!

Not mine.

Nor mine.