A Journe ‘Souscription’ Resonance May Set A Record At Phillips – Here’s The Science Behind The Dollar Signs
It’s been 26 years since F.P. Journe launched the Chronomètre à Résonance – and the watches are more fascinating than ever.
Everyone has their favorites, but if there is a single F.P. Journe watch which that really represents more than any other, what makes his approach to watchmaking unique, it is probably the Chronomètre à Resonance. Journe began selling the watch in the year 2000, and the beginning of the new century was a fresh take on an idea from two centuries earlier. Some of the earliest Journe resonance chronometers were part of the “Souscription” series of 20, which were first offered to clients who’d supported Journe by buying the first series of his Tourbillon Souverain. One of these, No. 007, is coming up for auction in a few days at Phillips, and in a very rare (if not possibly unique) case configuration. Journe Souscription resonance watches in the current market, routinely sell for millions of dollars – they are not only rare, they are also in the hands of collectors who prefer to hold rather than sell, in most cases.
The incredible auction records – including one set last May, at Phillips, for another Souscription resonance watch, No. 18, which sold for $6.3 million – tend to crowd out the fact that the Chronomètre à Resonance is catnip for collectors for a reason, and that without its early adoption by enthusiasts who were fascinated by the technical side of the watch, it might never have gotten to where it is in the market today.
F.P. Journe And Abraham Louis Breguet
The resonance phenomenon was first observed by Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch mathematician, physicist, and horologist who designed the first successful pendulum clock, in 1657. Huygens noticed that two clock pendulums attached to a single beam, would gradually synchronize their swings (in opposite directions). The French clockmaker, Antide Janvier, made clocks which used this effect, and Breguet was the first horologist to attempt to create resonance watches.
The reason clock pendulums, and watch balances, tend to synchronize with each other, is that the swing of the pendulums, or of the balances, transfer energy to the movement mainplate. This seems hard to believe since the forces involved seem small, but if you suspend a watch from a thread in a horizontal position, the beating of the balance will cause the watch to rotate back and forth. (This can get dense fast but the Dept. of Physics at UC Santa Barbara did the experiment).
Thanks to the balance spring, a balance has a natural frequency. Just as it takes little energy to keep a swing going once it starts swinging, so it takes very little energy to influence the rate of the balance.
Breguet suspected that air friction between the balances might be causing them to synchronize, but he was amazed to find out that the effect worked, even in a vacuum chamber; he would later write, “This appears to be absurd, but experiment proves it a thousand times over.”
How Resonance Improves Precision
The reason that resonance should make a watch more accurate, comes from the fact that the two balances become synchronized and stay that way, because they are exchanging energy through the mainplate. If one balance starts to run fast (due to some disturbance, like a physical shock), the excess energy will tend to be transferred to the other balance and both will return to their natural rate more quickly. The reverse is also true; if one balance starts to run slow, energy transfer from the other balance will cause it once again to return to its natural rate.
The actual math can get very complicated (there are dozens of scientific studies on the behavior of coupled oscillators, which is an important field of study in classical mechanics) but the effect and the physics behind it is real.
Journe had to solve some significant problems to make his resonance watches work – for instance, if the two balances are not adjusted so that they are running to within about five seconds of each other, they won’t synchronize, so it’s as if you had two adjust two watches to better than chronometer standards at the same time. Breguet found that he had to get his balances to within about twenty seconds, but of course, the balances and forces in a wristwatch are much smaller.
Resonance Watches Today
We can now look at what “resonance” actually means. A “resonant” oscillator is just one that has a preferred, or natural, frequency; a balance and its spring, or a pendulum and gravity, are two examples. What are usually called “resonance” watches actually use coupled oscillators. As long as there is some means by which the two oscillators are mechanically coupled, or connected to each other, they will affect each other; some makers, like Armin Strom or Beat Haldimann, use coupling springs.
As far as I know, however, F.P. Journe is still the only maker who used the principle of energy shared through the mainplate, which was used by Breguet. The rarity and scarcity of the early Souscription and pre-Souscription resonance watches isn’t artificial – it’s the result of the skill and time necessary to make one. Time will tell how the Journe market develops overall, but there are only 20 Souscription Chronomètre à Résonance watches in existence and there will never be any more. It’s possible for a watch to sell for millions without being interesting as a watch, but with the Chronomètre à Résonance, there is a connection between two brilliant watchmakers across two hundred years which is unique. The dollar signs at auctions may get headlines, but with the Chronomètre à Résonance, it’s the brilliant watchmaking that really closes the deal.
FAQ: Basics Of Journe Resonance Watches
- How do Journe resonance watches work? The two balances synchronize, and stay synchronized, by exchanging energy through the movement plate.
- Are all double balance watches resonance watches? No. The Dufour Duality produces an average of the rates of the balances, but not through the resonance effect. For more on double balance watches, see our story, “Double Balance Watches: What They Are, Why They Are, And How They Work.”
- Will the balances synchronize immediately? No. Usually, it takes a few minutes for the two balances to fully synchronize. If the power reserve drops too low, the balances may synchronize as well
View our collection of pre-owned F.P. Journe watches here, and contact us for more information on pricing and availability for any specific models.