Tag Heuer Grand Carrera Series Was An

Tag Heuer Grand Carrera Series Was An

Launched in 2007 and inspired by modern GT cars, the series was an instant success, widely acclaimed by watch and motor-sports enthusiasts for its effortless, at-a-glance readability and superlative aesthetics.

The brands passion for the avant-garde is an essential element of its DNA and history, and the driving force of its RD strategy.

An award-winning BaselWorld concept watch in 2004, the Monaco V4 became a commercial reality at the end of 2009, when it was successfully launched in limited edition of 150 Haute Horlogerie pieces.

A coiled strip of fine metal alloy, the hairspring provides the torque necessary for the balance wheel to oscillate and regulate its frequency.

Over the centuries, it has been significantly modified and improved.

Charles-Edouard Guillaume (1861-1938), the son of a Swiss watchmaker, discovered new alloys (Invar and Elinvar) that significantly reduced the metal springs thermal sensitivity.

Guillaume won the Nobel Prize for Physics for this invention in 1920.

However, the mechanical hairspring has three serious design limitations: a mass that makes it sensitive to gravity and deforms its geometry; a material that makes it sensitive to thermal expansion; and a divergence between its geometric centre and its centre of mass.

These may cause isochronal issues that can be technically and physically improved but never completely eliminated.

The second was keeping the movement 100 mechanical: conventional watchmaking wisdom has always held that a mechanical watch without spiral hairspring would necessarily require another energy source for its regulation.

The magnetic field, generated by means of 4 high-performance magnets and controlled in 3D through complex geometric calculations, provides the linear restoring torque necessary for the alternative oscillations of the balance wheel.

The oscillating period of the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept is resistant to changes from perturbing forces, which is what makes it an exceptionally good timekeeping device.

The movement built with this revolutionary oscillator is fully mechanical and does not contain any electronics or driven actuators.

It requires no additional components and is based on physical magnetic properties.

In a classical spiral hairspring system, the effect of gravity due to mass is a dominant issue.

With the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concept, the problem no longer even exists.

There is no loss of amplitude and the movements frequency can be modulated on a very large spectrum of frequency without overburdening the power supply.

The result is a significant increase in precision (division of time) and performance (frequency accuracy and stability).

Theoretical precision is significantly higher as it is possible to oscillate at small angles (the elementary principle of oscillator accuracy) without altering the return torque and, especially important, without causing geometric deformations.

It took TAG Heuers RD team 3 years of intensive digital 3D simulation research to precisely orient the TAG Heuer Pendulum Concepts virtual magnetic spring.

The challenge facing TAG Heuer now is to discover the magnetic equivalent of invar-elinvar: to, in a sense, add Charles Edouard Guillaumes accomplishments to those of Christiaan Huygens.

As with the V4, this may take years, but TAG Heuer is committed to taking on the challenge and pursuing the epic Pendulum adventure.

Serial Number Tag Heuer Grand Carrera