There are always a few major surprises at any major watch show, and the Salon this year had a big one. That was the presentation by Piaget of the Emperador Coussin XL 700P, a hybrid quartz-mechanical watch, which we first presented to you as part of our pre-SIHH coverage last December, and which was created, says Piaget, in celebration of its first in-house quartz movement from 1976. Having seen it, at last, “in the metal” at the Salon, we think we can address the questions many of you have, including how it works, and for those of you who are interested in quartz/mechanical hybrids, the question, “is it a Spring Drive?” The answer is both yes – and no.
The good folks at Piaget must be mighty tired of hearing the words “Spring Drive” by now, although questions about parallel technology are fair. The 700P is indeed very close in most respects to the Seiko Spring Drive. Although there are some differences in execution, the basic concept is identical. Here’s how it works (and bear in mind that most of what we’re going to say about the 700P mechanism can be applied to Spring Drive as well).
A conventional mechanical watch is powered by a mainspring. The mainspring turns a gear train that ends at the escapement – generally a lever escapement – and a balance wheel. The balance oscillates back and forth on its axis, and at every swing, it trips the lever, which allows the escape wheel to advance one tooth. As the escape wheel advances, it also gives a little kick of energy to the balance to keep it swinging. The whole setup controls how fast the gears move, which in turn controls how fast the hands move – and so you can tell time.
The 700P is different. There is a mainspring, and there is a more or less conventional gear train. However, there’s no escapement. The last gear in the train turns a tiny disk on which are mounted two permanent magnets. These permanent magnets turn in between a bracket holding two tiny electromagnets. This generates a current. In fact, the disk (Seiko calls it a “glide wheel” in Spring Drive) and magnet setup looks almost exactly like the very first electric generator: the Faraday generator, invented by Michael Faraday in 1832, which was turned by a hand-crank instead of gears and a mainspring.
The tiny trickle of current generated goes to a quartz timing package, consisting of a quartz crystal in the shape of a tuning fork, and an integrated circuit. The current makes the crystal vibrate at the usual frequency for a quartz watch: 32,768 hertz. The quartz timing package in turn controls the amount of current fed back into the electromagnets, to control the rate at which the generator wheel turns. The speed at which the generator wheel turns controls how fast the gears can turn – and again, you can tell the time; the generator wheel and quartz regulator performing exactly the same function as a lever escapement and balance would in a conventional watch.
In a Spring Drive movement, the rate of rotation is 8 revolutions per second; in the 700P, it’s 5.33 times per second. So what you have is a very high degree of accuracy, but no battery to run down (the main disadvantage of a quartz watch) and no lubricants in the regulating system (as you would find in the escapement of most mechanical wristwatches). This means rate should remain absolutely stable for the entire interval between services (which you’ll still need, as the rest of the train is subject to wear from the normal mechanical forces you’d find in a mechanical watch).
So how is it not a Spring Drive? Well, first of all, as we discussed in our previous coverage of the 700P, there is a long-standing debate about who was first off the mark with the original idea. Without rehashing both sides of the conversation in detail, what does seem clear is that both the Swiss and the Japanese researchers came up with the idea at about the same time (who may have heard what about what the other side was up to is something that at a remove of 40+ years may never be settled). Seiko was, as with quartz, the first to market in 1999.
Where the two sides differ is really in design, and in basic philosophy. The 700P is not a watch that Seiko would probably ever make. Seiko’s stock in trade is extremely high basic build quality for watches that are meant to be worn every day; the 700P, on the other hand, is unapologetically a luxury watch, with a design that makes use of precious metals, a variety of finishes and coatings, and various levels of transparency that make an impression pretty much diametrically opposed to that made by a Seiko Spring Drive. The movement is front and center in the 700P in a way that it simply isn't in most Spring Drive watches, and the movement architecture for the 700P – which is key to its aesthetics – is totally different from anything Seiko makes. The exception to this, of course, is Seiko's work with Spring Drive Credor, especially the chiming watches – in these, the movement is as much the story (at least) as it is in the 700P.
Spring Drive has been a defining technology for Seiko, of course, but it’s also a basic timekeeping concept and it remains to be seen whether or not customers are going to be able to see it as a general basic concept rather than a characteristically Japanese one – after all, fairly or not, most casual watch customers probably dichotomize watches into Swiss/mechanical on one hand, and Quartz/Japanese on the other. It’s ironic that Seiko continues to work to overcome that stereotype for its mechanical Grand Seiko watches, and that Piaget may have to work to overcome that stereotype for its hybrid quartz/mechanical watches.
Ultimately, of course, it’s going to come down to emotional appeal, and leaving aside questions of intellectual priority, there’s no doubt the 700P is in its own way a beautiful watch, where the whole hangs together in a very idiosyncratic way – one very characteristic of Piaget.
The Piaget Emperador Coussin XL with the mechanical/quartz caliber 700P is offered in a white gold, with a 46.5 mm case. Black ADLC coated bezel, generator and micro-rotor surrounded with white gold. Movement, hybrid caliber 700P, self-winding, with 42-hour power reserve; 5.5 mm x 34.90 mm. Hours and minutes with power reserve. Limited edition of 118 pieces; pricing is tentatively set at $70,800. See more at Piaget online.
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