The Freak Revolution
There’s a word that gets used in watchmaking so often it’s practically lost all meaning: revolution. It’s defined as a dramatic and wide-reaching change in conditions, attitudes or operation, something very few actually achieve. At the turn of the millennium, Ulysse Nardin did all three. This is how, in 2001, in the quiet of a small town called Le Locle, the watchmaking industry was turned on its head overnight.
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Engineering the pursuit of time
Ulysse Nardin is no stranger to turning the tide on watchmaking. Its marine chronometers provided such incredible accuracy for navigation pre-GPS, it was considered a competitive disadvantage for a Navy not to have one. It’s easier, therefore, to think of Ulysse Nardin less as a watchmaker, and more as a laboratory for the scientific pursuit of timekeeping. It could also be considered a manufacturer of high horology, in the sense that high horology elevates watchmaking to the peak of artistry and craftsmanship, but even that definition is doing Ulysse Nardin a disservice.
The man who took the risk
Even so, what happened in 2001 required the amalgamation of four kinds of genius. The first, Rolf Schnyder, was the visionary, the risk-taker who saw opportunity where others would not dare to tread. He had navigated Ulysse Nardin through the treacherous quartz era by digging deeper on mechanical watchmaking than had ever been attempted before.
The result was a trio of record-breaking astronomical complications.
The Trilogy of Time
The first rotating prototype
Next was Carole Forestier-Kasapi, an award-winning watchmaker whose remarkable rotating movement concept had beaten the likes of Philippe Dufour and George Daniels at competition, some of the greatest minds in watchmaking of the modern era. The calibre was even wound and set by the bezel, requiring no crown. Her concept was simple in theory, yet complex in execution, and whilst still incomplete, inspired Rolf’s appetite for the unusual.
The mind that could see mechanisms
It’s here Rolf made the connection between Carole’s idea and the brain of Dr. Ludwig Oechslin, our third genius. Those record-breaking astronomical complications, they were the work of Ludwig’s mathematical mind, which possessed the ability to see the mechanics of watchmaking in much the same way ordinary folk visualise taking a walk or eating a sandwich.
Turning the movement into time
Ludwig was also inspired by Carole’s incredible work. He had a vision of the rotating movement serving in its entirety as a minute hand, rotating once per hour. He was also able to resolve the concept’s challenges, such as its short power reserve, which he extended to an entire week. Such a special mechanism required an even more special heart beating inside it. This is when Ludwig decided now was the time to seek redemption for nearly two centuries of unfinished business.
An idea that could not yet exist
Some two hundred years before, another generational watchmaking genius called Abraham-Louis Breguet had concocted an idea. In a watch, the highly complex and intricate part that maintains the timekeeping, known as the escapement, is not without flaw. Whilst it can maintain accuracy to just a few seconds per day, it does so at the penalty of friction. This wastes energy and requires more servicing, and so Breguet sought to fix it.
His idea, the natural escapement, was brilliant. Apart from one tiny problem: it didn’t work. The capability to manufacture it did not it exist in the early 1800s. Unfortunately for Ludwig, the capability did not exist in the early 2000s either. Even with a redesign to improve it, the standard way of making escapements just wasn’t good enough. That’s where our next genius comes in, Ulysse Nardin Technical Director Pierre Gygax.
The material that changed everything
Pierre’s mission was to find a material both precise and light enough to bring the Ulysse Nardin Dual Direct Escapement to life. He scoured high-tech material labs and technical colleges for the answer, which eventually he found right there in Ulysse Nardin’s hometown of Le Locle. Who ever would have expected that the very material that nearly destroyed the watchmaking industry during the quartz crisis would be the key to a new era. It was the essence of the microchip—silicon.
What resulted was not only the most complex display of hours and minutes ever created, but also a vision of what the industry’s future would be. This material revolution, used in the truest sense of the word, has impacted every corner of watchmaking. Just as a Navy was nothing without a Ulysse Nardin chronometer, a watchmaker must also embrace Ulysse Nardin’s innovation of silicon to keep up.
The Freak Show
The watch, released in 2001 to a carnival fanfare unlike anything seen before, was aptly called the Freak. But the Freak wasn’t a vision of the future in isolation. It became a saga of forward-thinking experimentation that pushes watchmaking to the absolute limits of the physical universe. For example, four years later, the Freak Diamond Heart became the first watch with an escapement made entirely of the hardest natural substance on Earth, diamond. This introduced additional hardness and therefore wear resistance, but its production was just too inefficient.
Pushing the mechanism further
That led to the 2007 Freak DiamonSIL, which coated the silicon escapement components in a microscopic layer of diamond for the benefits of both techniques without any drawback. Alongside the Freak DiamonSIL came the Freak Innovision concept watch, which stretched the capabilities of silicon in watchmaking to every possible limit. Ten silicon innovations were introduced, including friction-free silicon bearings, jewel-less silicon bridges, and a flexible silicon shock absorber.
A laboratory on the wrist
2010’s Freak Diavolo introduced a tourbillon to the already rotating mechanism to make the most complex time-only watch even more so, while 2015’s Freak Lab revisited some of the Innovision’s capabilities with the addition of a bezel-set date. The Innovision 2 concept watch came two years later with a further ten innovations that included glass bridges and a constant force escapement, plus the ultra-efficient compliant automatic winding mechanism known as Grinder. A traditional rotor could not provide enough energy, so the patented Grinder system was developed to double the efficiency.
Relentless mechanical experimentation
Whilst the Freak Vision of 2018 brought the Grinder concept to a production watch for the first time, the 2019 Freak neXt would be the most ambitious Freak experiment yet. With thirty-two silicon blades oscillating completely friction-free three times faster than a conventional watch, it remains an open-ended technical development to usher in another new era of timekeeping. Meanwhile, the Freak X arrived in the same year to bring the Freak’s wild capabilities to a more daily wear, complete with more traditional crown setting.
2022 upped the ante by pushing the Freak to the absolute extreme for the Freak S, which featured the world’s smallest differential to split energy between two inclined balance wheels. Despite powering two escapements, the highly efficient Grinder automatic winding system was still capable of providing the necessary power. A new benchmark was set for the world’s most complex time-only watch.
25 years. Still UNstoppable.
In 2023, the Freak One was honoured at one of the industry’s most prestigious award ceremonies, the GPHG, with the Iconic prize. But far be it for this to be the end of this ongoing upheaval. It’s an appetite that cannot be satiated, a thirst that can’t be quenched. With the Freak a quarter-century in, thirty-four patents deep and responsible for fifteen different calibres to date, Ulysse Nardin’s quest to drive revolutionary change is just getting warmed up.