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The Greubel Forsey Tourbillon Cardan Revives The Super-Tourbillon

There’s a new Lord Of The Rings.

Jack Forster10 Min ReadNov 13 2023

The tourbillon may have been more or less declared obsolete as a regulating device, but if it’s supposed to be dead from an innovation perspective, Greubel Forsey has not gotten the memo. GF has been in the tourbillon business since it was founded in 2004 and its first “Fundamental Invention” was its signature Double Tourbillon 30º. The idea behind the Double Tourbillon 30º was to take the tourbillon, which had been patented by Breguet in 1801 for use in pocket watches (which was not a hard decision for him as there weren’t any wristwatches then anyway) and see whether or not it could be made relevant in a wristwatch. The problem of rate variations in different positions had not gone away when the world transitioned from pocket watches to wristwatches but it had become more complicated, and the idea behind Greubel Forsey’s multi-axis tourbillons was to adapt the tourbillon to a wristwatch by creating a complex rotational motion which would cause the balance, balance spring, and escapement to rotate through both the vertical and horizontal positions.

This meant, of course, an increase in complexity in what was always a very complex mechanism, and I will never forget a conversation I had with Stephen Forsey in New York, just after the launch of the Double Tourbillon 30º, in which I asked him whether or not this was an issue in terms of chronometry and he replied, “It is always a struggle to gain more than you loose.”

Precision, Wristwatches, And The Promise Of The Tourbillon

In subsequent years, there was for one brief and shining moment, a horological precision and accuracy competition known as the Concours de Chronomètrie, and in 2011, there was evidence that Greubel Forsey was indeed gaining more than it was losing – a production model of the Double Tourbillon 30º scored 915 out of 1000 possible points, a  record for the Concours. The practical advantages of Greubel Forsey’s advanced and innovative tourbillons were small but real, though of course, the company’s appeal has always been as much about the visual and emotional impact of its watches as their precision as such. In particular, Greubel Forsey has a well deserved and hard earned reputation for excellence in movement finishing, and its combination of classic Swiss-French movement finishing with some elements taken from the English tradition as well, has given its watches a level of excellence that’s rare even in high end luxury watchmaking.

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The latest tourbillon from Greubel Forsey is the Greubel Forsey Tourbillon Cardan, which is a combination of some features from the company’s past work, and some which are new. This is the latest example of what you might call a super tourbillon, in an analogy to the idea of the supercar – something created as an exercise in pushing the limits of performance, materials, and construction to see how far they can go. Such tourbillons are costly to develop and produce and are rare today for those reasons.

The basic idea behind the Cardan goes all the way back to the original Double Tourbillon 30º and it is based on the idea that taking a tourbillon and inclining it at a 30º angle will offer better averaging of rate than a traditional tourbillon, the axis of which is at a 90º to the movement. The traditional arrangement was designed around the pocket watch, which is usually either  vertical in the pocket or flat on a table, and in such a situation a traditional tourbillon creates a single average rate for all the vertical positions. As George Daniels says in Watchmaking, you then have but to adjust the flat positions to match, and you should in theory have a perfect timekeeper (at least as far as variations in rate due to gravity are concerned). A wristwatch, however, is in a number of different positions throughout the day and so the 30º angle helps ensure that the balance and balance spring are never in any of the most extreme positions for longer than a few seconds.

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The Double Tourbillon 30º is an example of a double tourbillon – that is to say, there are two distinct tourbillon carriages. There is an outer carriage, which rotates once every four minutes and inside is a carriage inclined at 30º to the plate, which rotates once every minute. The angle of the inner tourbillon never changes but as it’s contained in the rotating outer carriage, it precesses around the axis of the outer carriage, with a motion somewhat like that of a wobbling top.

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The Tourbillon Cardan is an inclined tourbillon as well but it’s not constructed in the same way as the original Double Tourbillon 30º.  The new tourbillon has a very fast period of rotation, turning on its axis once every 16 seconds. This is in contrast to the majority of modern tourbillons, most of which rotate once per minute (this has the advantage of allowing you to put a seconds hand on the upper pivot of the carriage and hey, presto, you’ve got a seconds hand). Tourbillons rotating faster than one minute are already slightly unusual – De Bethune has a 30 second tourbillon, which it uses in a variety of watches; and the fastest tourbillons nowadays can rotate once every five seconds, although this generally requires major modifications to the going train. Greubel Forsey’s fastest rotating tourbillon to date was the Tourbillon 24 Secondes.

Rotation Speed: Is Fast Or Slow The Way To Go?

A fast rotating tourbillon should theoretically offer better averaging of rate across positions, although there is an ongoing debate about what the optimal rate for a tourbillon really is, from a chronometry standpoint. Breguet made four minute tourbillons; Omega’s competition tourbillons from the 1950s had tourbillons that rotated once every seven and a half minutes, and more recently, Rexhep Rexhepi’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton, the Akrivia X Louis Vuitton LVRR-01 Chronographe à Sonnerie, uses a five minute tourbillon. Certainly, a fast-rotating tourbillon walks away with the brass ring in the razzle-dazzle department.

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The second and most notable feature of the Tourbillon Cardan are the two interlocked titanium rings which stabilize and guide the upper pivot of the tourbillon cage. The term “cardan” usually refers in horology to the gimbals seen in a boxed marine chronometer, and there, their purpose is to keep the marine chronometer in as perfectly horizontal a position as possible no matter how the mighty, angry seas trouble an intrepid mariner’s ship. The rings in this case aren’t there to keep the tourbillon perfectly horizontal (obviously) although there have been watches in the past that have incorporated such traditional gimbal systems (including this one, from Zenith of all places). Instead, they control the movement of the upper tourbillon pivot. Each of the rings pivots in jeweled bearings, and both tilt between +30º and -30º over a 48 second period.

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The balance is produced in-house by Greubel Forsey and is quite large – 12.6mm, with meantime screws, and the size makes for even greater visual impact, as well as being part of a more traditional approach to precision, which eschews high beat oscillator systems in favor of a slower frequency, combined with a larger mass; the most extreme examples of this approach can be found in high precision pendulum clocks, where a beat of anywhere from one half to two seconds is often combined with a very heavy pendulum bob.

Running Rings Around A Tourbillon

The action of the inclined, high speed tourbillon and the two rings is pretty spectacular, and although the movement of the rings through 60º takes up a lot of space (requiring a very high domed crystal) this is, in this case, quite clearly a feature, not a bug.

The gyrating motion of the tourbillon and its construction are very unusual, and the only tourbillon I can think of that has a similar action is the Jaeger-LeCoultre Spherotourbillon, which JLC introduced in 2012. That tourbillon had two axes of rotation – one, around the axis of the carriage, and the second, around a second axis inclined at 20º. Likewise, the Tourbillon Cardan rotates around the axis of the carriage (once every sixteen seconds) but also around a second axis, inclined at 30º.

Zoom InLower bridge for the tourbillon as seen from the back of the watch. The unusual shape of the bridge mirrors the cardan rings and is one of the most spectacular examples of specular, or black polishing, I’ve ever seen.

The tilting motion of the rings is deceptive, as it looks at first as if the rings are rotating with the tourbillon carriage. I would guess that this is technically a double tourbillon, as there is a carriage responsible for the 48 second cycle of the oscillation of the rings, inside which the 16 second tourbillon rotates. The whole thing is rather astonishing – I wouldn’t have thought there were much left at this point for anyone to do in terms of making the tourbillon fresh and interesting again, much less technically innovative, but here we are. Greubel Forsey is making very few of these – 11 pieces per year, and of course the elaborate construction and extremely fine finishing, as always, makes for a correspondingly high price; $532,000 at launch.

Zoom InThe Greubel Forsey Tourbillon Cardan: would wear.

The tourbillons made by Greubel Forsey became famous thanks to a combination of features not found anywhere else in modern horology – hell, they’re features not found anywhere in the entire history of horology, period. The ingenious variations on the tourbillon are a big part of the story, of course, but there is also the microcosmic city-scape of the movements, the fanatically refined movement finishing, and as well, the combination of Swiss finishing techniques with some elements of English watchmaking, which in addition to being unbelievably attractive, is also a nice shout-out to the historical relationship between John Arnold and Breguet.

Fundamentally, however, this is a watch which despite its great intellectual interest, is almost irrationally compelling emotionally; if you knew absolutely nothing about the theory and practice of the tourbillon as a regulating device, you would still find the gyrations of the tourbillon and the oscillations of the rings irresistibly watchable. The tourbillon has become a somewhat well-worn complication in recent years and its ubiquity has taken away some of the fascination it used to be able to create, but if any watch shows that we really can make tourbillons great again, it’s the Tourbillon Cardan.

The Greubel Forsey Tourbillon Cardan: case, 45.50mm (at the caseband) x 13.81mm, with domed sapphire crystal the height increases to 18.15mm; case is titanium, water resistant to 30M/100 feet. Movement, Greubel Forsey “cardan” tourbillon, with 16 second inner tourbillon cage inclined at 30º; cycle of outer flying Cardan cages, 48 seconds with a double variable tilt of ±30º. Inner and outer cardan rings in titanium, swiveling in jeweled bearings. In house variable inertia freesprung balance, 12.60mm diameter with 6 gold timing screws; four fast rotating mainspring barrels delivering 80 hour power reserve. Movement dimensions, 39.60mm x 13.53mm, with 389 components, running at 21,600 vph in 49 jewels. Phillips overcoil balance spring, with Geneva style outer stud. Bridges and mainplates primarily in titanium and nickel silver (maillechort). Price, $532,000. For more info, visit Greubel Forsey.