Every fifteen to twenty years or so, the watch industry gets the blues. Suddenly we're told there is nothing left to invent, that watches have reached the highest standard of quality humanly possible. And as the product offering hits rock-bottom, prices go sky-high. Usually, this is the spark that ignites a “watch revolution” when the cards are shuffled and a new hand is dealt.

The latest explosion to date came in the aftermath to 9/11 (September 11th 2001), following a decade during which mechanical watches slowly but surely triumphed. There was nothing left to say: companies simply had to roll out the tourbillons to pull in the customers. Until, that is, some new dynamiteros rewrote the rules. Leading the pack was a certain Richard Mille: techno-industrial tonneau cases, “engines” with nothing to hide, unheard-of materials, cuttingedge mechanical performance and stratospheric prices. His (almost) overnight success was the signal a handful of creative young watchmakers had been waiting for. They and their engineer, artist and trader friends who kept them supplied with scientific reviews, aesthetic jolts and profitable meetings that brought in their first customers.

Aficionados were first to jump onboard, followed by retailers. The new millennium became the Mille-ennium. A new chapter in watchmaking history was written, with references the late twentieth century had never imagined, a new stylistic vocabulary, and some astounding turns of phrase. Richard Mille apart, a few other examples help explain this new “watch revolution.” De Bethune has grown from humble beginnings to a full-fledged Manufacture resting on three pillars: David Zanetta, a man of intense creativity and watch culture who co-founded the firm with Denis Flageolet, an inspired watchmaker who is completely out on a limb when it comes to weird ideas and a furious urge to put them into practice. The duo they form wouldn't have the same impact without Noah Chevaux, who translates the founders' words and music into micro-energetic equations. An idea, a style and a patent, that's quite a combination! High-flying nanophysics concepts lend weight to the offbeat intuitions of a facetious watchmaker, himself inspired by his associate's artistic edicts. The perfect conditions for a new quasar to explode in the international watch galaxy. The counterpart to the De Bethune experience, the solutions TAG Heuer found, despite limited resources, to the problems encountered when developing its famous Monaco V4 watch, which is driven by belts and wound by linear weights, turned up some decisive discoveries in particular with respect to silicon. The brand has lost count of the number of hours spent on one of Europe’s most powerful supercalculators, or the amount of advanced research into surface states and synthetic polymers, including a full-scale revision of the highly specific physico-chemical properties of friction. The engineers who poured over these questions didn't train at watchmaking schools but were recruited in the aeronautics industry.

Mention must go to the incredible saga of the founders of the Hautlence brand. They have developed a unique watch “engine” using a system of rods that look like they should be driving a steam train. Harry Winston, meanwhile, is in the habit of opening it doors once a year to a rising star in the new watch firmament. Each Opus is an eagerly-awaited event and an opportunity to train the spotlight on an unexpected aspect of the watchmaker's art. At Urwerk, Felix Baumgartner has taken it upon himself to fit a display devoid of hands inside a “hammerhead” case. His revolving satellite system transfers to the back of the watch (can we still call this a watch?) such original indications as the time left before the movement’s next “service” by the watchmaker. Nor should we forget the double and even quadruple inclined tourbillons yoked together by Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey, or the Zenith Zero-G’s brandnew tourbillon inside its gyro-gravitational cage.

The most revolutionary innovations are undoubtedly those relating to the escapement or regulating organ. In this respect, it is worth pointing out that De Bethune was the first brand to develop and use silicon balancesprings. Not content with merely using this material, featuring performances that in themselves represented a major breakthrough, Denis Flageolet has also patented a new terminal curve that enhances isochronism by limiting the distorsion due to shocks. This revolutionary hairspring with a balance that is equally inventive – whether in terms of its performances or its appearance which looks more like that of a space vessel than a watch. The central part of the latter is made from titanium in order to reduce the overall weight and thus to avoid any deterioration in rate due to impacts. In order to achieve maximum inertia, four mobile platinum weights are placed at the tip of each arm. Their conical shape guarantees ideal aerodynamics, they enable dynamic rating and, when associated with titanium, guarantee an ideal inertia/weight ratio. Having reached this point, it is hard to imagine getting much closer to perfection with the means currently available. And yet this balance and spring assembly is positioned by a bridge held on either side by a spring system based on jewels inserted into the arbors serving as columns. This principle features two major advantages. On the one hand, it enables the watchmaker to position the balance in an even more accurate and more stable manner than a traditional bridge; and on the other, its spring effect absorbs shocks at the bridge level. The pivots of the balance- staff are thus preserved and the oil in the bearings remains far more stable.

While no one until now really cared enough to understand what goes on at the heart of a watch, the subject is now under scrutiny at manufacturers and engineering schools alike. The infinitely precise sidereal time of post-atomic clocks (one second slow every 400 million years) is matched by the very personal time of watchmaking nanotechnologies: a dizzying journey into the infinitely precise world of parts assembled within a micron, shapememory levers and teeth with a better profile than interplanetary rockets. Supramolecular physics is only a step away. How long before watchmakers will need a doctorate in nuclear engineering before they can see their name on a dial?

Gears that need no lubricant, parts cut in alloys taken from aerospatial research, platinum-titanium balances, vertical tourbillons, diamond balance springs, magnesium bridges, forged carbon cases… “Generation S” (for silicon) is on first-name terms with its hypertechnological century but, with the exquisite politeness of well-bred children, isn't averse to honouring the family tradition from time to time and engaging in some time-honoured guillochage, poli bloqué, melodious chimes and saddle-stitching using handwoven and waxed thread…