Credits: Article and images by Oliver R Müller @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/why-chronometry-still-matters/
Certifying a few dozen watches with a chronometer certification, as some independent watchmakers do, deserves credit, but when you certify all your mechanical watches with the coveted hallmark of chronometer, as Rolex and Omega do, then you are in a totally different ballpark. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of watches which need to pass a certification which lasts 15 days.
After launching the Spirate last year to allow for a better adjustment of the hairspring, Omega is now pushing the boundaries even further with the Laboratoire de Précision. Interestingly, the Spirate is not an entirely new concept (even though the Swatch Group has applied for a patent) because the idea dates back to the 1920s, when a watchmaker of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Charles Le Brun, had the idea of having three screws on the balance wheel, giving the watchmaker the possibility to fine-tune the attaching points of the hairspring. Nevertheless, the Spirate has allowed Omega to achieve even better chronometric results with a deviation of only 0/+2 seconds per day.
Achieving chronometric precision implies not only precise manufacturing of the components and a meticulous regulating of the movement, but also mastering the detrimental impact of magnetic fields. And on this turf, there aren’t many players left, at least not those that are playing at the same level as Omega, Tudor and Rolex.
The first two brands comply with an extremely impressive norm verified by METAS set at 15,000 gauss, whereas Rolex doesn’t communicate the value its watches have to comply with in terms of magnetic field resistance. The value of magnetic resistance a watch has to comply with is impressive, but not so relevant in everyday life where the highest values of magnetic fields are around 1,500 milligauss (1 gauss = 1,000 milligauss). The more common standard for certifying the resistance to magnetic fields is set at 16,000 A/m which translates into 200 Gauss.
Credits: Article and images by Oliver R Müller @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/why-chronometry-still-matters/