Simply Abu Dhabi VIII

1 2 2 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I A rich and specific culture. A professional ethic. An all-consuming passion. Where the enduring expertise of the artisan confronts the trailblazing imagination of the engineer. Where knowledge and know-howmeet and embrace a living history, centuries old. At TAG Heuer, artisans work hand in hand with engineers to reinvent the future. • Different disciplines, one impulse. • To open eyes wide. • To set records, then smash them. • To shock those who say no into seeing yes. • To lure time and space, fractions of the immeasurable and unbounded, into their most breathtaking configurations. More precisely: to be the best and the fastest, the most accurate and the most avant-garde. This is Haute Horlogerie by TAG Heuer, a state of mind that exploits, side by side, the pioneering achievements of 17th century watchmakers and the most awe-inspiring technologies of today. TAG Heuer haute horlogerists do not reproduce the amazing achievements of their predecessors — the beautiful minds who set the conventional rules of classical haute horlogerie. Instead, by adopting and adapting the innovative approaches of their forerunners, and pushing these to the outer limits of the possible, they create the classics of tomorrow. Through this visionary heritage, TAG Heuer has earned an asserted legitimacy as the acknowledged master of the technological vanguard of haute horlogerie. The brand’s strongly defined personality is esteemed by peers and fine watch connoisseurs alike. This unique character has engendered the most innovative watches and chronographs ever created. TAGHeuer’s MIKROTOURBILLONS is one of them. TAG Heuer’s most ambitious luxury chronograph to date, the MikrotourbillonS is not only the world’s fastest tourbillon: it is the first ever tourbillon on a 1/100th of a second chronograph that can be started and stopped, an audacious timepiece of peerless precision and virtuosic savoir-faire. Even by TAGHeuer’s own pioneering metrics, the dual-chain, double- barreled MIKROTOURBILLONS, is entirely off-the-chart extraordinary. The first tourbillon chronograph capable of certification- level precision timing, it is by far the fastest, most accurate and most breathtakingly beautiful tourbillon ever imagined. “We call it a movement because that is what it does, at the same rhythm, around the clock. Aphysical force and amachine so complex that it seizes your breath, with as many components — muscles and bones — as a human, and its own beautiful, tireless heart, pumping infinite energy from its impossibly intricate core. One glance and you’re gone, down a vortex of transcendent wonder.” Jack Heuer REANIMATINGTOURBILLONTECHNOLOGY A tourbillon (French for ‘vortex’ or ‘whirlwind’) is themost intricate and iconic complication in haute horlogerie. An elaboratemechanical system for regulating the speed at which a watch ‘beats’, this ingenious complication overcomes the effects of gravity by placing themovement’s balancewheel and escapement inside a rotating cage. Revolutionarywhen it was invented in 1801, modern precision techniques, many developed byTAGHeuer, havemade it obsolete. Yet the tourbillon remains a classic ‘novelty’ feature of many high-end luxury watches because, in its ornate complexity, usually visible through a window in the dial, it is the ultimate attention getter—a showcase of watchmaker virtuosity. Beautifully complex but slow, imprecise and unnecessary: for these reasons, TAG Heuer, the most precision-driven, performance- obsessed of all the high-end luxury Swiss watch houses, had never made a tourbillon escapement watch. That is, until TAGHeuer’s Science & Engineering department, in its pursuit of zero-tolerance chronograph precision, took up the challenge of reinventing the tourbillon, making it not just a delight to look at but, like all TAG Heuer creations, unbelievably fast, precise, and avant- garde. The result is a mechanical wonder that breaks all records for speed and accuracy, and sets the stage for the first-ever dual-certifiable chronograph. DOUBLINGTHE STAKES The MIKROTOURBILLONS has two rotating tourbillon mechanisms visible on its dial face, one for time telling and one for timekeeping. The first beats at 4 hertz—28,800 beats per hour—and controls the ISO 3159 compliant watch; its hand sweeps the dial at a standard tourbillon speed of once a minute. The second, the world’s fastest tourbillon, controls the 1/100th-of-a-second chronograph and is dynamically compensated to run at 50 hertz, meaning it beats at 360,000 beats per hour and rotates at a dizzying five seconds per revolution, or 12 times a minute. Another mind-numbing technical prowess: it has no cage and can be started and stopped thanks to the dual chain architecture. UNIQUE 2-CHAINARCHITECTURE Since 1969, the year TAGHeuer launched the world’s first automatic chronograph movement, coupling watch movement with chronograph function has become standard operation procedure. There is a serious “hitch”, however, with this isochronous system: its wheel chain gear system increases energy loss. This is one of the greatest quandaries of chronograph design — how to keep chronograph operation from disrupting watch operation. A first avenue of research led to the TAGHeuer Calibre 360 inMarch 2005with its additional module for the chronograph. Then the answer came with the TAG Heuer Mikrograph 1/100th of a second Chronograph in January 2011, ingeniously outfitted with two independent kinematic chains — one for the watch and one for the chronograph, integrated in the same movement. The MIKROTOURBILLONS is built with the same integrated movement with dual chain architecture, thereby eliminating the need for a clutch. Separating the watch chain from the chronograph chain eliminates the risks of the chronograph influencing thewatch and vice- versa; but most importantly, it reduces energy loss and optimizes the precision of the chronograph’s regulating organ. This dual chain architecture allows the all “MIKRO” timepieces (MIKROTOURBILLONS, MIKROGIRDER, MIKROTIMER and MIKROGRAPH) to be ISO 3159 compliant across the board. The MIKROTIMER and the MIKROGRAPH are already COSC certified— i.e. with the chronograph function running, a feat virtually impossible to achieve by conventional mono-frequency chronographs.