Today’s watch porn comes courtesy of Roger Dubuis, a manufacturer of odd timepieces. Their latest, the Quatour (which kind of sounds like a character from Total Recall), is a watch with four separate escapements that average each other out as the watch is worn. It’s very weird.
The watch is absolutely massive – about 48mm from stem to stern – and the weird escapement system is designed to ostensibly improve accuracy. The theory is that when a watch is worn gravity tends to pull down different parts differently. The escapement is the part of the watch that flips back and forth to drive the watch hands forward one tick at a time (check this out to understand it better). To account for gravity, tourbillon watches spin the escapement 360 degrees. This watch, on the other hand, just has four escapements and a differential gear to “average” their movements. It basically “ticks” four times, making an oddly pleasing, organic sound.
You can read a full hands on over here or just marvel that this thing costs about $400,000 and is limited to 88 pieces. An all-silicon version costs a cool $2 million.