Replica watches: As everyone knows, but try not to think, our time will one day run out. That is written in our DNA. It was transmitted to us by our ancestors through a long chain that we pass on to our descendants. The chain of life. A chain that dates back to time immemorial. Tempus Fugit replica watches is a crazy watchmaking project to create a watch that can be passed down through 10,000 years, a time capsule that records our fleeting participation in this long chain, generation after generation.
It’s a beautiful October day in Joux Valley, the bucolic cradle of the greatest of great complications. Cows graze peacefully on gentle green slopes; time seems to have stopped. One thinks of Virgil and his Georgics, which celebrates the profound beauty of nature and the tillage of the soil, a poem of epic proportions composed around the year 30 BC, which aspired to peace in the midst of civil war. Of these ancient verses, we all know at least two iconic words, inscribed on many sundials: tempus fugit replica watches.
Time flies. But to do it justice, it is convenient to recite the entire verse: “Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus, singula dum capti circumvectamur amore”, that is: “While time flies, time flies without return, while we wander, captives of our love for him.” detail.”
“Captives of our love for details”?
And it is precisely in the company of a passionate captive of love for detail that we find ourselves today: Dominique Renaud, the renowned watchmaker and co-creator of Renaud & Papi, a workshop specializing in the most complex of grand complications that was acquired by Audemars. Piguet. He left it a few years ago to pursue his wilder projects as an independent watchmaker (remember his DR01, a ‘spatially pivoting blade resonator’?). He takes us to the workshop of another passionate about details, the ingenious young watchmaker Julien Tixier.
It is a truly amazing workshop where, once again, time seems to have stopped: less than 50 m², literally packed to the brim with the most traditional and rare small-scale watchmaking machines, and all the tools and instruments to create, shape and decorate a clock from start to finish, including the exterior. In this incredible mini-manufacturing he reigns supreme (we’ll return to Julien Tixier’s career in detail in a later issue). It is here that the equally incredible adventure of the Tempus Fugit replica watches unfolded.
Let’s start with DNA
It all started in the mind of a third man, Dr. Benoît Dubuis, president of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences, director of the Campus Biotech in Geneva, former dean of EPFL in Lausanne, and president of the Fondation Inartis.
A team of geneticists, statisticians, and companies in the field of genomics had created an algorithm that calculates personal life expectancy with the help of risk parameters based on environment, lifestyle, and genetic makeup. That gave him the idea to design a watch with a custom “countdown” function based on the results of this probable life expectancy algorithm. He approached Dominique Renaud.
The latter found the idea a bit shocking, but agreed to think about it. Who would want a watch that calmly counts the days left to live? Pure torture! But, he thought, if this countdown did not take the form of a cut-off point towards which we are irrevocably heading, but instead of a life expectancy – in watchmaking terms a “life reserve” – linked to a perpetual calendar, programmable up to 2100, the proposal became much more acceptable.
Even better, by linking this reserve of life to an even rarer perpetual calendar, millennia long, timed to run for ten thousand years, we could transform our own mortality into one link in a long chain of lives with the help of a clock. “developer”. , a philosophical watch to pass down from generation to generation. More than a watch, it would be a time capsule that would combine the mechanical arts and existential issues. “That’s what makes this watch totally disruptive!” exclaims Dominique Renaud.
This exceptional watchmaking challenge and the concept of highlighting the timeless march of successive finite periods convinced Benoît Dubuis, who agreed to finance it with the Fondation Inartis.
Dominique Renaud got down to business and designed the first models of this unprecedented movement. Armed with these prototypes, he set out to see Julien Tixier, in his eyes the most promising young watchmaker of his generation. These two generations collaborated step by step on Tempus Fugit best fake watches, adding numerous innovations as they went.
“Everything, absolutely everything in the development, architecture and execution of this watch has to do with the transmission”, explains Julien Tixier. “In thousands of years, the clock should always be easy to repair. It has to be possible to maintain it regularly. So it’s designed to be as simple as possible, despite the complexity of its function. And at the same time that the watch is delivered, it has to be possible to pass on the “timeless” know-how that allowed its manufacture”.
The movement of the Tempus Fugit replica watches is remarkably compact, measuring just 31.5mm in diameter and 7.6mm thick. These small dimensions have been possible thanks, above all, to a totally innovative patented design: the Secular Perpetual Calendar. Instead of traditional probe leads, which make movements much more cumbersome, the system has been reversed and is designed as a very compact modular calculator, the components of which are stacked around a single axis (to transform it into a “standard calculator” ). ” perpetual calendar, programmed “only” until 2100, you only remove one of the layers): a suspended train barely 8.3 mm in diameter and 1.85 mm thick, with no less than 51 pieces.
The “life gauge” that tells users the progress of their life expectancy (or life expectancy reserve) is read around the edge of the movement by the progression of a colored ring, timed for 100 years, advancing one notch only once a year. “But there is no precise date of death; that is suggested by a zone of color that fades over a few years”, says Dominique Renaud. This gauge is calibrated based on data provided by the owner and analyzed by the boot algorithm. Symbolically, an electronic chip with the owner’s genome is incorporated into the movement (when ownership changes, it can be replaced with a new chip and the caliber reprogrammed).
There is another surprise: a secret message chosen by the owner is engraved on a hidden plate and will suddenly appear on the outer edge of the movement on a certain date a few years, decades or centuries from now. It is both philosophical and romantic.
The movement is literally encased in a monobloc case sealed by a “safe-like” lock, which can only be opened by an accredited watchmaker. With no visible crown or correctors, the watch is adjusted through the back glass
using a small key hidden in the pin of the removable bracelet.
time flew by
While the concept of temporal transmission from one generation to the next is at the heart of the
Tempus Fugit Luxury replica watches project, it was also an active part of its execution. Between the experienced Dominique Renaud, in his sixties,
and the extraordinarily gifted but not yet thirty Julien Tixier, the transmission was continuous. The old man is full of praise for the younger man. “He gives me more than I give him,” he insists. Starting from Dominique’s models, Julien created 3D models
(between an old rose-turning machine and a lathe, not far from an enamelling kiln, stands a computer),
drew up the plans and dimensions and put to work.
“Everything was made here, absolutely everything, except for one part: a microdisk for the life indicator
and its highly complex internal toothing, which would have taken too much time,”
says Julien, while from the beginning everything was designed to be as simple as possible,
either in terms of function or production. While the watch itself can expect to live for thousands of years
(its own death date is not stated, we only know that it will stop on December 31, 9999),
it was made to be very easy to use: compact, discreet, and without all ruffles. Eternal.
But when Julien says that he sought to simplify production, Dominique corrects him:
“He insisted on working with his own stop escapement, which requires a lot of adjustment,
he counted the balance spring himself, choosing it from a batch of beautiful old hairsprings;
and he made the sphere, he made the electroplating, he made the case;
He is an expert in all kinds of decoration, he tempers steel,
operates the furnace, polishes his pivots, carves the teeth himself,
programs a small CNC machine that is standing in a corner…”
Both worked on each component, continually arguing in what was visibly a very fruitful collaboration. For these “captives of love of detail”, time flew by.
Oh yes, one last detail: the price. This was calculated according to the “characteristic vacuum impedance”, or the physical constant Z0,
which results from the different amplitudes of the electric and magnetic fields that propagate in a vacuum. Which, after calculation of the equation (the details of which we will spare you) comes to 376,730Ω. Or, in more understandable terms, 376,730 Swiss francs. (But this is not guaranteed for 10,000 years.)
