Independents

A pre-premier, the 4N Digital Carrousel Watch

 

Pre-premier of the 4N Digital Carrousel Watch

François Quentin is a designer with ideas and perseverance.  He started his adventure in watchmaking with Hautlence in Neuchâtel working on the design of the display and the housing.  His particular interest is in new ways of displaying the time on a wrist watch, an interest which he has continued to cultivate since leaving Hautlence.

His present project, the 4N watch, made its first appearance at the BaselWorld Fair in 2010.  At that time it was not much more than an idea with some rough concepts of that ideas realisation and not more.  I must admit that I did see this presentation at BaselWorld 2010, but I ignored it.  It didn't seem to me to be realistic at all.  I didn't see how it could be fit into a wrist watch.

At BaselWorld 2011 François presented a model of the 4N wrist watch with its digital display and an interesting band attachment, also François' design.  The correct functioning of the display mechanism had been tested and confirmed with a scale model made of plexiglass 10 times the size of the watch.
 

Note the push buttons on the band's attachments.  The bands do not have a buckle, but are made to length and attach to the watch lugs using the pushbuttons.  Clean and easy.

Now we "fast forward" to February 2012.  The BaselWorld Fair is in 5 weeks and the excitement is mounting. The first complete and working watch will be shown at the fair.  Prototypes movements are working fine, the testing has been successful.  The first watch is being mounted.  These are the first pictures.
 
Here on movement number 1 the sub-disks carrying the digits are not yet mounted, but they can be seen on the prototype below.  Note how the display is put together.  From the right there is a large carrousel for the minutes low digit, a disk with the minutes upper digit and another carrousel with the hours.  The minutes carrousel carries 5 sub-disks each with 2 numbers.  At each minute the carrousel turns 72 degrees, one fifth of a turn, bringing the next sub-disk into place to indicate the next minute.  Thus with 2 full turns of the carrousel minutes 0 to 9 are indicated.  The 10 minutes disk is a simple disk with 6 digits, 0 to 5 that advance every 10 minutes.  The hours carrousel consists of 4 sub-disks each with 3 numbers thus showing from 0 to 12.  Every hour the hours carrousel turns 90 degrees, one quarter of a turn.  After three full turns of the carrousel all 12 hours have been indicated.



The power to move all this comes from 2 barrels in parallel which will give autonomy of several days.  Of course much effort went into engineering a system which needs very little energy to work, in keeping with its being a watch mechanism.  To this end the traditional system using star wheels and jumpers could not be used.  A star wheel system requires peaks of energy just before the movement which would be impossible sustain in this watch.  Here a spiral spring is wound continuously and released using a pawl and latch to release the energy causing a smooth acceleration and deceleration of the carrousel. 

The movement of the carrousel is entirely satisfying, not a fast jerk and stop, but a smooth acceleration and then deceleration.  As the carrousel turns clockwise the sub-dials turn counter clockwise giving a very satisfying sensation that the digit is smoothly moving backwards to find its new position.

The depth of the movement and the free view into the mechanism is fascinating.  Here without the case we can really enjoy the entire height of the movement and the finishing of all the parts.  Note the criss-cross côtes de Genève on the upper bridge of the carrousel cage.  This finishing on these parts made of German silver with black rhodium plating gives the impression that the parts are made of carbon fiber.   As I mentioned this first finished movement is now just missing the sub-disks with the digits to be finished.

François confided the realisation and testing of his ideas to the company Renaud & Papi in Le Locle, the daughter company of Audemar Piguet that designs and produces APs complicated watches, but which is also one of the major companies realising and producing complicated watches for many other brands.  Only approximately 50% of Renaud & Papi’s work load is for AP.  As such the 4N watch benefits from R&Ps long experience and the finishing really shows.  Note the main bridge with its perfectly bevelled edges and the 19 sharp internal corners. 

It has been a long adventure from the first balking prototypes to a now smoothly operation watch, but it has been worth it.  Congratulations to François Quentin for his success in bringing his idea with the minute and hours carrousels to fruition.  His perseverance has paid off.  His watch has a very unique display like no other.  I am very much looking forward to seeing this watch completed at Basel in a couple of weeks.

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