A decade ago, for a watch to be shielded from the hard knocks and unpredictability of daily life, it had to be forged in steel. Heavy, massive, undentable steel. Now those days are gone, ever since watchmakers started casting an eye over other industries in search of the high-tech core they were lacking. Materials they could use to create watches with the resistance and lightness of racing machines. They found them in Formula 1 and in the aerospace industry, where every last gram counts and the least shock can prove fatal. And so it was that carbon composites made their grand entrance into the watch world, titanium became the new normal, and alloys of ceramic, aluminium, even amorphous glass, appeared. These changes didn't come about by chance. Now that engineers have moved into research and development departments, watchmakers are no longer in sole command. In fact it's thanks to this melting pot of expertise that the professionals of time measurement have been able to achieve feats that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago: mechanical movements that require no lubrication; revolutionary regulators – the characteristic ticking that's now a hum - that would be inconceivable without a material such as silicon. Without getting into the quarrel between "old school" and "modern" about whether silicon has its place in watches, whose every part must be repairable, the fact remains that advanced materials have rocket-launched traditional watchmaking into a new dimension, as well as reigniting the race to measure time with the greatest precision. These innovative materials, now an accepted feature inside the watch, extend to the outside too. Where once gold was king and steel heir to the throne, watchmakers are turning to new-age alloys for the performance advantages they deliver, as well as to open up a wider aesthetic palette for their designs. Blocks of coloured sapphire are machined in record time. Ceramic comes in bright hues. Injected with "foreign bodies", gold is impervious to scratching and adopts evanescent tones. Carbon is forged, layered into rainbow colours or imitates the grain of wood. Aluminium becomes metal foam. While it's always tempting to take technology for granted, these are all very recent breakthroughs, including many that were introduced just this year. And this is only the beginning.
Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie
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