The F. P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance, “Pre-Souscription”

F. P. Journe founded the company that bears his name in 1999, but by then, he was already an experienced watchmaker who had created a number of highly complex watches and clocks, including a tourbillon pocket watch, his famous planetarium for Asprey. His first wristwatch was a tourbillon wristwatch with a one-second constant-force remontoire, the first time the remontoire had ever been fitted to a wristwatch. Journe was fascinated by the horological experiments of early pioneers in precision timekeeping, including those of Antide Janvier and Abraham Louis Breguet, and was especially preoccupied by a problem both Janvier and Breguet had tackled, almost two centuries before Journe began making his own timepieces.

The problem was that of resonance, and, spoiler alert, Journe managed to succeed in creating true resonance watches in a most spectacular fashion — the various versions of the Chronomètre à Résonance and the complication itself, are an essential part of the identity of F.P. Journe. The resonance watches and the Tourbillon Souverain have, since the company began production, been joined by a whole host of other fascinating and often extremely complex timepieces, but those two models and complications still define F. P. Journe’s watchmaking right down to the present day.

The Chronomètre à Résonance was a revolution in watchmaking when Journe launched it at Baselworld in 2000. Not only was it the first resonance wristwatch, but also the first resonance watch of any kind since Breguet. Mechanical resonance in horology, is the tendency of two oscillators with the same natural frequency, to begin oscillating synchronously; simply put, beating together at the same time. If they are somehow coupled to each other mechanically, the force produced by one oscillator can influence the other. 

The phenomenon was first observed in pendulums. Galileo noticed that two adjacent pendulums would tend to begin beating synchronously but according to researchers, he did not understand the basis of the phenomenon. Christian Huygens, who designed the first working pendulum clock and patented it in 1657, also noticed that two pendulum clocks mounted on the same bracket would tend to beat in time with each other. 

But the actual physics of the phenomenon were understood only very slowly; one author writes, “The phenomenon was then completely ignored by Newton but was partly rediscovered in the 18th century, as a purely mathematical surprise, by Euler. Not earlier than in the 19th century did Thomas Young give the first correct description.” 

The same author doesn’t seem to have been familiar with the use of the phenomenon in watch and clockmaking, however. Young died in 1829 but by then, Breguet had already begun making resonance pocket watches, in extremely small numbers — only three are known to have survived. 

In pendulum clocks, resonance occurs when two pendulums of the same length are connected to each other mechanically. The simplest example is probably two clocks set next to each other on the same shelf; unless the shelf is perfectly rigid, it will flex slightly as the pendulums swing, allowing them to influence each other. 

It’s easy to see how two pendulums, which tend to be rather massive and which in fact keep better time the more massive they are, could influence each other but it seems to strain credulity to think that you could observe the same thing in a watch. A watch balance is a tiny fraction of the mass of a pendulum, and the forces exerted by the balance on the movement plate are so tiny that it seems they couldn’t possibly cause a resonance effect to occur. Breguet, however, was himself very surprised to find out that resonance between two watch balances could and did in fact occur. 

There were a couple of conditions that had to be met. The first was that the two balances had to have an identical beat — for obvious reasons if one balance vibrates 18,000 times an hour, and the other at 28,800 times per hour, resonance is not going to happen. The other is that the two balances have to be adjusted so that their daily rate is very close — Breguet, in his experiments, found that two balances in a single watch would only begin to beat synchronously if they were adjusted to within 20 seconds a day of each other. 

Breguet himself was suspicious that the balances might be influencing each other via air turbulence but he was able to rule that out, writing in his journal, “The first of these double watches [No. 2788] was three months in the hands of M. M. Bouvard and Arago without the seconds hands having parted by the smallest part of a second; it was put twice in a vacuum and maintained in ‘absolute void’ for 24 hours, as well as worn, laid flat, and hanging from a chain without ceasing to keep to the second.” 

Breguet died in 1823, and as far as I know, no one picked up the thread of resonance watches, let alone wristwatches, until Journe became interested in the mechanism after working with his uncle on the restoration of a Breguet resonance clock, no. 3177, in 1982. Resonance watches were at that point an extremely obscure subject, but Journe decided to attempt to make one. His first attempt, completed in 1984, was not successful, but by 2000 Journe had solved the problem of incorporating a resonance mechanism into a wristwatch.

The biggest challenge was that there is much less space inside a wristwatch case than in a pocket watch case. One of Breguet’s resonance pocket watches, no. 2788, is 63mm in diameter but Journe’s Chronomètre à Résonance watches are in 38mm cases. That is an extreme reduction in size, and the problem is made even tougher by the fact that resonance watches, both Journe’s and Breguet’s, basically have two watches in one case. 

There are two balances, but each balance has its own escapement, gear train, and mainspring barrel and there are two separate dials, with separate subdials for the small seconds, on the front of each Chronomètre à Résonance watch. Because the forces are so small (the balances are coupled to each other by the tugging of each balance spring on the mainplate, which is about as homeopathic a force as you can imagine) the watches must be adjusted very closely. Journe found that they had to be synchronized to each other to within five seconds a day or less.

This Watch Of The Week is one of the very earliest Journe Chronomètre à Résonance watches. It was made during the same period as the more well known “souscription” resonance watches, of which 20 were produced but it is not part of that series, and collectors have taken to calling them “pre-souscription” models. 

The movement is unusual for F. P. Journe in that it is not made of rose gold, but rather, rhodium-plated brass; Journe’s well known today for using rose gold for all movement plates and bridges but in the very early 2000s, brass was used and the early brass-movement Journe watches are among the most avidly desired by collectors.

 Earlier this month, a “Pre-Production” Chronomètre à Résonance hammered at Sotheby’s Geneva for CHF 1,071,000; the catalog notes say, in part, “Something that has only relatively recently come to light in some collectors’ circles is that the Souscription production does not represent the very first pieces created, despite being numbered 1 to 20. Indeed, two identifiable Resonance productions exist that predate the Souscription. The pre-Souscription series totals approximately 30 pieces and differs in one key respect: while they are suffixed -00R similarly to the Souscription watches, the engraving to the case back is shallow and done by hand, whereas on the Souscripton models it appears thicker due to the adoption of laser engraving.”

The rarity of these watches, as well as their importance in the history of F. P. Journe, and for that matter, in the history of watchmaking, makes competition for them fierce. But owning one means much more than simply owning a transiently fashionable timepiece. The Journe Chronomètre à Résonance watches are, to fans of serious watchmaking which both innovates and engages with the deep history of watchmaking as both art and science, indispensable.