REVOLUTION WATCH September 2022

Thin, it appears, is very much in, with Richard Mille now entering the arena of the gossamer fine and, in the words of the immortal Monty Python, “wafer-thin” horological super machine. Just a few years ago, it seemed more of a high concept curiosity rather than the ne plus ultra in technical achievement. One thing about Richard Mille is that when the brand enters a category of watchmaking, it instantly makes that horological realm the most au courant and urgently cool in the world. Because, as we can see from the brand’s incendiary success, Richard Mille is not so much tapped into the zeitgeist of contemporary culture as it has become the zeitgeist itself. Proof positive of this is the fact that while the Bvlgari Octo Finissimo Ultra was made in…

As a trained mechanical engineer, I love witnessing people invent better, smarter ways of doing things. That is the primary objective of society’s constructs anyway, right? To inch humanity closer toward perfection and gradually solve all of the world’s problems — it’s an aim that stems from the indomitable human spirit. So many aspects of our exhilarating cover watch, the Bvlgari Octo Finissimo Ultra, were rethought and redone. Shortly after we slated this record-breaking world’s thinnest watch for our cover, Richard Mille threw down the gauntlet in the form of a watch that is 0.05mm thinner than the Ultra. I bet Bvlgari is already working on something even more ambitious. Oh, what a time it is to be alive and working in this industry! In this scintillating edition of Revolution, we celebrate…

Ross Povey The founder of TudorCollector.com, Ross Povey is regarded as the world’s leading expert on vintage Tudor watches. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Revolution magazine in the UK. He has contributed to influential horological publications including The Telegraph, The Rake, Watchonista and Hodinkee, and is the co-author of the book Daytona Perpetual, a celebration of the automatic Rolex Daytona released through Pucci Papaleo Editore. Ross is also an international speaker and regularly hosts watch events in the UK and Europe. Cheryl Chia Cheryl Chia is a watch writer with a deep interestin independent watchmaking, movement engineering and decoration. Contrary to popular sentiment, she believes that watches can be assessed objectively in terms of complexity, quality and finishing. Felix Scholz Felix Scholz has spent the last decade writing professionally about watches, yet he still struggles…

The race for ultra thin watches has been running pretty hot over the last few years, with near-constant jockeying from fan favorites Bvlgari and Piaget. These two brands seemed very much like the incumbent favorites until today when, out of nowhere, Richard Mille, backed by the power of Ferrari, smashed through the competition with its debut entry, the RM UP-01. With this wafer of a watch, a slice of over-engineered titanium, Richard Mille has become not just a contender in this contest, but the one to beat. First of all, there’s a lot going on here. Let’s break it down into some raw data before we talk about what it means. The RM UP-01 has a total thickness of 1.75mm, and a caliber thickness of 1.18mm. Compare this to the Bvlgari…

OK, this is what you need to understand about Greubel Forsey. In the realm of ultra high-end watchmaking, it is largely unrivaled for three reasons. The first is that technically the watches express an incredible horological authenticity. What do I mean by this? It’s simple. Everything that the geniuses who are Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey have pursued — from inclined escapements and balance wheels to fast rotating tourbillon cages and multiple axis tourbillon cages with inclined balance wheels, to two inclined balance wheels with rates averaged by a differential mechanism, to constant force devices — are for one reason. That is to further the fundamental horological pursuit of accuracy in a wristwatch. This is exactly the same goal as all the greatest watchmakers of the 18th century who plied their…

The dawn of the Zenith El Primero in 1969 with its frequency of 5Hz was the first big leap in the quest to measure and mark tinier fractions of a second beyond the standard eighth- or sixth-of-a-second measurement. Over the last two decades, a spectrum of brands from Breguet to TAG Heuer have turned their hand to increasing beat frequencies in chronographs while it remained the stomping ground for Zenith. The most well-known representatives are the El Primero Defy 21, which uses a clutch-less, dual-train construction to reliably achieve a frequency of 50Hz, as well as the more recent El Primero A386 which realizes the full potential of a 5Hz movement by tacking on an additional gear train on the escape wheel to drive a lightning seconds hand that flies…