Concord C1 Tourbillon - A Mechanical Marvel Revitalized
Usually I like to just dive right in to the features and specs of a particular watch. However, in the case of the Concord C1 Tourbillon, a little history and a brief science discussion are in order. Abraham-Louis Breguet, who was an accomplished French watchmaker at the turn of the 18th century, struggled with the most fundamental concern of the day, gravity. The effects of gravity were thought to severly affect the accuracy of any given timepiece. Breguet wanted to overcome the issue that a watch is constantly rotated horizontally, vertically and all angles in between.
So, the watchmaker tinkered and tinkered until he produced one of the most complex watch mechanisms in existence both then and now. An escapement is an apparatus that takes random rotating motion and turns it into a controlled back and forth oscillation. This is actually what produces a clock's tick tock sound. Essentially, the frenchman took this device and placed it into a special assembly of his own making that was able to rotate in all directions, thereby offseting the effects of gravity regardless of position. The Tourbillon was born. Today, there is great debate about whether or not this actually resulted in any additional increase in accuracy, but the technical marvel alone makes watches with this feature highly desired.
Concord has taken this original idea and improved on it using the technological advancements of our time. With today's precision there is no doubt about the accuracy of this timepirece. The C1 Tourbillon is housed in a 48.5 mm case that's 18.50 mm tall. The tourbillon case has a scrolling display that shows seconds in 5 second increments. The case is made out of sapphire crystal. Peering through it, there is an impressive "skeletized" dial that has multiple subdials and time indicators that simply mesmerize.
The Concord C1 Tourbillon is a mechnical watch with hand-wound movement. For practicality, there is an 84-hour power reserve. One cool feature is the "trust index" located on the upper right hand quadrant of the face. This is a visual estimator of the watch's balance amplitude, the number of degrees of rotation of the swing of the balance wheel.
Prices vary widely depending on the material of the case. The model with a Carbon Fiber dial has a retail price of $12,900 while the 18k Rose Gold model is price at $34,500 retail.
Source: Concord
