Q: What is the purpose of the tourbillon?
A: Even among those involved in watches, many cannot explain exactly why the tourbillon has such an advantage. The tourbillon is a mechanism that rotates the balance wheel, the heart of a mechanical watch, once every few minutes. Its purpose is to forcibly eliminate the time discrepancy that occurs when the watch changes orientation (called orientation error). When it was invented, the only timepieces people carried were pocket watches. This meant that watches were basically stored vertically. The tourbillon was effective in eliminating the time discrepancy that could occur when watches were stored only vertically.
It is difficult to demonstrate its true value with a wristwatch
In contrast, a wristwatch constantly changes position depending on the movement of the arm. For this reason, Dr. Ludwig Oechslin, who created complicated watches for Ulysse Nardin and others, said, "When you wear a watch on your wrist, the orientation of the watch is forced to change. Therefore, a tourbillon is unnecessary." Indeed, a tourbillon does not offer as much benefit to a wristwatch as it does to a pocket watch. In addition, independent watchmaker François-Paul Journe said, "Tourbillons installed in wristwatches are not accurate to begin with."
Of course, there are watches such as Patek Philippe, Breguet, FP Journe, and Richard Mille where a tourbillon model is more accurate than a non-tourbillon model, but in these cases, it is better to think that the manufacturer's technical ability to create an accurate watch using a tourbillon, which is difficult to achieve accuracy, was superior, rather than that the tourbillon itself is excellent.
