Hands On With The Angelus ‘ Instrument de Mesures’ And ‘Chronograph Tachymètre’ Chronographs

Angelus, one of the oldest and most respected chronograph specialists in Switzerland, was relaunched under the ownership of La Joux Perret in 2015, and their first watch was a doozy: the U10 Tourbillon Lumière. a 52.10 mm x 30.40 mm exercise in extravagant horological extroversion, which also managed to be, size notwithstanding, almost classically tasteful in its execution. It came as a surprise to vintage enthusiasts who were expecting watches that more closely reflected the company’s history, but over the last ten years, the collections have coalesced into two basic families: the L.A.B. watches, which are the company’s playground for contemporary watchmaking; and the La Fabrique collections, which are vintage-inspired and equipped with traditional but modern, tilting pinion column wheel chronograph calibers from La Joux Perret. (La Joux Perret, which was founded in the 1990s as a complications specialist, was acquired by the Citizen Group in 2011, when Citizen acquired Prothor, La Joux Perret’s holding company).

I loved the Tourbillon Lumière in its own right, but I had not up until now had a chance to actually spend any time with their chronographs, which have been well received and which certainly looked awfully appealing – they seemed to have both a quiet elegance and a certain no-nonsense air which I thought was pretty attractive.

I’m happy to say that the watches once in hand, vastly exceeded expectations.

The Chronograph Tachymètre watches were launched last month, and, along with other watches like the Chronographe Medicale, and the Instrument de Vitesse, I think the company has certainly established its credentials as a maker of classically inspired chronographs as much as anyone who’s a fan of the vintage products could wish. So far Angelus in its modern incarnation, has avoided doing reissues of beloved models from its past like the Chronodato (a very charming, complete calendar chronograph with moonphase) and I think the results have been outstanding, based on a few days with representatives of the modern production.

The Chronograph Tachymètre watches are pretty much everything you could possibly want if you, like so many of us, lie awake wanting a Golden Age monopusher chronograph of the type that auction catalogs used to call a “fine, rare, and elegant gentleman’s chronograph.” The watches are modestly sized (I mean that as a compliment) at 37mm x 9.25mm, and everything about them looks proper – crisp, clean dial printing, vintage-adjacent syringe hands, and typefaces chosen to be evocative of age and tradition without overdoing it. They can be had in either steel or gold, at $23,000 in steel and $41,000 in gold, and all three are limited editions, with 25 of each in steel, and fifteen in gold.

There are those among you who are probably already familiar with the interesting story behind the movement but it’s worth repeating just in case. The La Joux Perret caliber A5000 is the engine inside both the Instrument de Mesures and Chronograph Tachymètre watches, and it uses a column wheel, with a tilting or oscillating pinion (the terms are synonymous). The movement was originally designed by none other than Techniques Horlogères Appliquées (THA) in the 1990s. THA was a complications specialist house founded by Denis Flageollet, F.P. Journe, and Vianney Halter, and the movement has been supplied in small numbers to independents such as Massena Labs, Ming, and J.N. Shapiro; it was originally intended for use by Cartier as the caliber THA 045MC. They’re not exactly identical movements, of course, but they’re directly related to each other and share the same basic architecture.

The version used in the Chronograph Tachymètre watches has gilt plates and bridges and steelwork done with great cleanliness and precision, albeit not with the kind of elaborate, enormously time consuming thorough hand finishing you find in some high end chronographs, but then again, these won’t run you six figures either. I find this sort of approach refreshing – after all, no less a luminary than George Daniels spoke approvingly of the dignified appearance of polished steel against gold (and he would know) and you get the same sense of solid, careful, unobtrusive refinement here.

The Instrument de Mesures Chronographs

Having expended several complimentary adjectives on the Chronograph Tachymètre, I have to confess that my heart belongs to the Instrument de Mesures, which were launched last June.

I know what you’re gong to say, because I already said it to myself: What on earth could be more impractical than a chronograph with no hour or minute registers? Do we live in a world where all the most important events take place in a sixty second window? Why in the world would anyone want a chronograph of such limited utility, and especially one with such relatively obscure functions as a telemeter (which tells you how far away something is based on the elapsed time between a visual event, like a distant lightning bolt, and the arrival of the thunder) and a pulsometer?

The relatively simple answer is that we don’t love things for reasons; we fall in love and then backfill the reasons if anyone challenges us. The Instrument de Mesures commits to its limitations and it turns out that they are really not limitations at all – they are instead design decisions which actually have a practical upside, which is that without those annoying subdials cutting in on the action, like unwanted dance partners, we instead have the three scales as they seem to have been meant to be seen: pure in essence and without distraction. In particular, I’m in love with the snail tachymeter display, which allows you to time units per hour from 500 to twenty, which is really all any sensible person needs.

Angelus has obviously been at pains to make sure the dial is as legible as it can be. There are lovely alternating textures, with raised printing and here the syringe hands really stand out for their ability to show the time instantly, without obscuring any of the three scales. In a way this watch really does it all. Need to measure a pulse? Done. Need to know how far away that artillery barrage is? Done. Need to know if you’re doing five hundred or twenty widgets per hour on your factory production line? Done and done. I would especially like to note the crisp serifs on the telemeter scale – that’s the kind of stuff that will keep people posting macros to social for decades to come.

If I had to pick just one out of the lot that Angelus sent to me, I think it would be the white dial Instrument de Mesures. The chronograph is a complication in which there is an almost irresistible tendency to add things to the dial until you have, typically, at least one more thing there than needed to be there. The Instrument de Mesures is not trying to appeal to any sort of broader user base and it has what so few designs have, which is the strength of its convictions. Most of the events I have to time are mundane things like dryer loads, or how long something’s been on the boil or in the oven – tasks which are elevated, perhaps, by using a mechanical chronograph but which are so quotidian as to risk diminishing the pleasure in using the complication.

The thing about scales like a telemeter is that there are no insignificant events you can measure with it (or at least, I can’t think of any). The use cases for a telemeter which are cited again and again in horological writing, are either manifestations of nature’s might (the distance to a lightning strike) or of man’s inhumanity to man (an artillery barrage). Add to that the abstract pleasures of a tachymetric scale, and the sense of contact with the frail beats of fragile mortality you get with a pulsometer, and well … you’ve got a little microcosm of the human experience of time and the inherently transient nature of life, right there on your wrist.

The Instrument de Mesures is 39mm x 9.25mm; the Chronographe Tachymètre is slightly smaller, at 37mm x 9.25mm. Both use the A5000 caliber; the Instrument de Mesures is available in steel, with a black or white dial; the Chronographe Télémètre is available in gold or steel, and with a white, rose, or steel grey dial. Water resistance for all watches is 30 meters/100 feet. Find out more about these exceptionally pleasurable chronographs, including pricing and availability, at Angelus-watches.com.