The astronomical complications
When we think about time, we think about hours, minutes and seconds, but of course, the true scale of time is quite literally universal. From the moment we humans first looked up and realised the sun, moon and stars moved in rhythm, astronomical timekeeping has been the foundation of our society. Mastering its power, however, requires an extraordinary level of rare genius—a genius Ulysse Nardin needed in order to endure.
The Origins of Astronomical Timekeeping
The earliest form of astronomical timekeeper is the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism, built over 2,000 years ago to track religious and social calendars. Since religious rituals are often linked to the movement of the heavenly bodies, it was in temples and churches that our place in the universe was first considered. One such church was the Vatican, where an important astronomical clock had lived for 300 years, but had unfortunately stopped working. Many famous clockmakers had attempted to bring it back to life, all of them unsuccessful.
The Man Chosen to Restore Time
The answer was to be found in Switzerland, in the workshop of Swiss watchmaker Jörg Sporing. Not Jörg himself, but his apprentice, Ludwig Oechslin. Ludwig, fascinated by a minute repeater he couldn’t afford, had apprenticed as a watchmaker so he could build one himself. He was a quiet and unassuming type of person, with a mind tuned for problem-solving. As well as watchmaking, his fascinations also included mathematics, astronomy and archeology, and under the tuition of Jörg, had found a way to combine all of these passions into one: astronomical clockmaking.
The Impossible Task That Revealed a Genius
Ludwig had quickly surpassed his master’s abilities, his most accomplished project to date an astronomical clock accurate to a single day in 144,000 years. His skills did not go unnoticed, and he was invited to repair the Vatican clock that had defied so many great clockmakers before him. It seemed like an opportunity too good to be true, and unfortunately that turned out to be so. The only reason he’d been offered the job was because his predecessor was using him as a scapegoat to cover up for his own failure. As Ludwig arrived at the Vatican, his contact disappeared. He’d been set up to fail.
With the components making up the 60 functions of the Vatican clock all around him, with absolutely no documentation at all, he should have been entirely out of his depth. The knowledge to fix the clock had been lost to history. It was an impossible task for even the brightest clockmaker. But Ludwig’s excellence in mathematics, astronomy and archeology gave him a different, clearer perspective. In his mind, he was able to forensically reconstruct the clock with perfect clarity, to identify why it wasn’t working and restore it. This was true, tangible genius in action.
A Shared UNstoppable Obsession with the Impossible
Meanwhile, the new leader of Ulysse Nardin, Rolf Schnyder, had come to visit Jörg Sporing in the hope of commissioning a show-stopping complication to revitalise the embattled watchmaker. It was a post-quartz era, and where other watchmakers had succumbed to battery power, he was doggedly defiant. His vision of a mechanical future was high-risk and high-stakes. The fate of Ulysse Nardin was hanging in the balance. Just like Ludwig, he had been inspired by a minute repeater and visited Jörg to commission one. What he found instead was Ludwig’s astronomical clock hanging on the wall in Jörg’s workshop.
A thought sparked in Rolf’s mind. Could an astronomical clock of that accuracy, he wondered, be shrunk to the size of wristwatch? It had never been done before, and the idea seemed to be almost impossible. Impossible perhaps for an ordinary watchmaker, but not for a genius. It was an opportunity unmissable by Rolf, who met with Ludwig to discuss his dream of an astronomical clock that could be worn on the wrist. Could Ludwig do it? The lever-based mechanisms ordinarily used in watchmaking simply wouldn’t work. In his restoration of the Vatican clock, however, Ludwig had rediscovered a much older solution for complex mechanisms that just might work: wheels.
The overwhelming calculations needed to make use of wheels in astronomical clocks were beyond most ordinary watchmakers, but they made clear sense to Ludwig. They unlocked endless possibilities at the wristwatch level, ideas out of reach of standard watchmaking. He wasn’t immediately convinced, however. Firstly, he wondered whether Rolf was motivated by commercial gain and not by passion, and secondly, the incredible accuracy of his wrist worn astronomical instrument would be impossible to read at that small size.
Creating the Cosmos on the Wrist
Rolf made Ludwig a promise. Inside the walls Ulysse Nardin, Ludwig would have complete freedom to design and create anything he wanted. “Great ideas,” Rolf told him, “come from dreamers, thinkers, inventors.” The two men couldn’t have been more different, one an outgoing leader, the other a quiet intellect, but Rolf saw the potential in giving Ludwig free reign to explore his genius untethered. Ludwig realised that Rolf’s words were sincere, and his passion true. The unlikely duo would soon become fast friends.
What was to follow was three of the smallest and most complex astronomical timepieces in the world, the record-breaking Trilogy of Time. Comprised of the 1985 Astrolabium Galileo Galilei, the 1988 Planetarium Copernicus and the 1992 Tellurium Johannes Kepler, the vastness of our solar system could now be contained in something as small as a wristwatch.
A Legacy Built on the Impossible
And Rolf was true to his word, allowing Ludwig to continue his exploration of our universe within the sanctum of Ulysse Nardin, ultimately developing many other incredible watches such as the mind-blowing Moonstruck. Two very different people united by a passion for the impossible, brought together in a rare moment that marked the start of a new chapter in the pursuit of time.