Credits: Article and images by Joshua Munchow @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2023/12/23/top-5-least-useful-horological-complications-and-they-are-still-awesome-reprise/
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No. 1: foudroyante seconds
Unless you are a complication nerd into every type of mechanical complication and very well versed in the odd, you may not initially even know what this is. And that is my first piece of evidence supporting its utter uselessness.
Jaeger-LeCoultre Duomètre à Chronographe
The foudroyante is a hand displaying each individual tick of an escape wheel, usually by a wheel that meshes with another toothed wheel attached to the escape wheel.
This foudroyante wheel will have the same number of teeth as the beats per second of the balance, so one rotation of the gear equals exactly one second. This creates a blazingly fast hand that races in circles but stops completely with every tick, causing a hand that looks like a super-low framerate animation of a spinning hand.
The technical challenges accompanying the foudroyante include rapid power consumption, introducing significant timing inaccuracies, and requiring a very well balanced and lightweight hand to prevent wear or drag on the escapement (part of those timing inaccuracies).
It is an odd thing to watch, somewhat disconcerting because it covers so much distance but stops completely with every beat of the balance. Unlike a sweeping second hand or the dead second display, it doesn’t have much use because it simply moves too darn fast.
F.P. Journe Centigraphe Souverain Anniversaire
Visually it is incredibly impressive, and I would say rivals a high-speed chronograph hand or a tourbillon for a feature destined to capture the attention of those glancing at your watch.
Anything moving that fast is bound to grab the gaze, but it really lacks much in usefulness. That is unless it is found on a chronograph and can be stopped. And this is precisely where one might find a foudroyante: as a fraction-of-a-second display for a chronograph function.
And while this might help to determine the fractions of a second that you measured, the regular chronograph second hand will also be able to display this, albeit in a smaller and possibly harder-to-read format, but still as a typical feature of a chronograph.
So the foudroyante is often an addition that isn’t entirely necessary in that context, even though it technically makes sense.
But it isn’t always used in conjunction with a chronograph, and in that instance I can find no justification for its presence outside of being a quirky feat of mechanical watchmaking. The display moves too fast to be read; it is more of a visual representation of the escapement than anything.
Watches featuring a foudroyante chronograph include the Habring Foudroyante Felix, the Jaeger-LeCoultre Duomètre à Chronographe (a semi-useful iteration), and the F.P. Journe Centigraphe Souverain (another chronograph).
The enticing Breguet Classique Chronométrie Reference 7727
“Foudroyante” is sometimes called “flying seconds,” though I personally would say that the name flying seconds should refer to something different, specifically the semi-foudroyante, which displays the rapidly moving second hand but with a rotational period of more than one single second.
Some high-frequency chronographs do this, displaying six seconds or ten seconds so that the display is less jarring. This is also found on the Breguet Classique Chronométrie 7727, which features a two-second subdial that makes 20 distinct stops in one rotation. But since the subdial is so small, the distance between each stop is miniscule, making it appear much smoother and lacking the dramatic display of a true, one-second foudroyante.
And that is, in my opinion, why it is included on any chronograph or regular wristwatch: drama.
The lightning speed (which incidentally is the origin of the name: “foudre” is French for “lightning”) of the start and stop, five to ten times a second, is very alluring. But it is also very negligible to the use of the watch, and unless it is the only measurement of the fractions of a second on a chronograph, it is superfluous – put there simply to make reading the fraction displayed elsewhere more visually friendly.
And for that reason, I think it is the most useless complication in a wristwatch, and simultaneously why it is so dang cool.
It has very little reason to exist as it does and makes the movement vulnerable to many issues thanks to its inclusion, but tickles my visual cortex so precisely that I have to stop and ogle.
I mean, this is why we get into mechanical watches in the first place: they are, as a category, wholly impractical and pointless thanks to technological advances over the last century. But they do cool things and that makes us smile, so I guess it’s even.
* This article was first published on December 15, 2019 at Top 5 Least Useful Horological Complications (And Why They Are Still Awesome).
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Credits: Article and images by Joshua Munchow @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2023/12/23/top-5-least-useful-horological-complications-and-they-are-still-awesome-reprise/
