Dopo 90 anni dal debutto di un’icona, arriva il Reverso Hybris Mechanica Quadriptyque.

Nnato come semplice ma innovativo orologio per chi praticava il Polo, Jaeger-LeCoultre presenta, a Watches and Wonders 2021, il primo orologio da polso al mondo con quattro quadranti funzionanti. 

Lo sviluppo del Reverso più complicato mai creato

It is the result of over 6 years of development, it claims 11 complications and 12 patents, a real masterpiece of technique and engineering. All these peculiarities gives the watch the title of the most complicated Reverso ever created by the Maison.

White gold case with dimension of  51.2 x 31 mm, thickness of 15.15 mm and water resistance of 30 m, it is a rather confined shapes and includes features that are not obvious considering the many complications offered and the reversible case.

The beating heart is the hand-wound Jaeger-LeCoultre In-house Caliber 185, equipped with a patented system by the Maison able to synchronize and update, at the stroke of the midnight, all indications shown by the four quadrants.

But how does the Reverso Hybris Mechanica Quadriptyque work?

The first dial

This face shows the time and indications of a perpetual calendar that can always provide the correct date, taking leap years into account as well.

The central character of this section is the flying tourbillon (being without the upper bridge it seems to be fluctuating) which stands out at 7 o’clock by performing one rotation per minute.

The second dial

The second dial of the Reverso Hybris Mechanica Quadriptyque provides, in jumping format for the hours and snapshots for the minutes, the indication of the same time as the first quadrant. In this part of the watch, you can admire the fantastic hand decoration on the plate of the movement with the Guillochage motif, called Clous de Paris.

From a Maison that counts on over 200 watchmaking calibers with bells, we could only expect a watch of this level,with the presence of a splendid motif to mark the time (in this second face we can see the elements of the chimes mechanism).

By gliding the slide located above the crown, the melody composed of low notes is sung (number of hours), followed by an alternation of high and low notes (quarters of an hour), and then conclude with a succession of high notes (number of minutes to add to the elapsed quarter hours). Finally the alarm played represent the current time.

On this Reverso we find the innovative and recent gongs of the set minute repetitions directly to the sapphire crystal, to exploit the acoustic properties of the material.

The hammers, striking the gongs, release a clean and powerful sound. Acoustic component innovations, first launched in this watch, allow to obtain a seamless ringtone, with no pauses between hours, quarter hours and minutes.

The third dial

This is the inner part of the Reverso case in which they can be viewed, for the first time in the history of mechanical watchmaking, three lunar indications: the synodic cycle, the draconic cycle and concluding with the anomalistic cycle.

Thanks to these indications it is possible to determine events such as ellipses, both solar and lunar, and rare phenomena such as the Supermoons.

At 12 o’clock, the phases of the moon in the northern hemisphere are indicated by means of a movable disc in blue gloss decorated with golden sequins.

At 7 o’clock we find a counter with a Sun around which a small Moon rotates, which indicates the draconic cycle that specifies when the Moon’s path crosses the Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

At 4 o’clock we can see a representation of the Earth with a hemispherical Moon drawing around it an eccentric orbit. This counter shows the variable distance between the Earth and the Moon: the so called anomalistic cycle.

The fourth dial

Located on the outside of the central part, it depicts a map of the starry sky, engraved and lacquered in palette of blue shades which lays to create the background to the moon in rose gold.

This face of the Reverso allows the reading of the moon phases of the southern hemisphere, feature that further distinguishes it, reason being most of the indications of the phases lunar, are offered only for the northern hemisphere.

Underlying the secret of the four working quadrants is the solution used for the first time in the 2006 Reverso Hybris Mechanica Grande Complication à Triptyque. Every day at midnight, a pin comes out of the main movement of the case to activate a mechanical corrector in its central part by advancing the views of the part central.

The box is as complicated as the watch

After a period when the watch has not been used, all indications can be set of the calendar and astronomical, quickly and intuitively, through the box with which it comes delivered to the owner.

On the side of the box we find a crown that is used to set the number of days elapsed since the last time the watch was worn.

Conclusion

The result of a Maison that has always been focusing on R&D  and conquering precision, the Reverso Quadriptyque turns out to be one of the easiest watches to wear in our time with grand complications. Very few people will be able to vaunt of having such a watchmaking masterpiece on their wrist being limited to only 10 examples.

The retail price of the Reverso Hybris Mechanica Quadriptyque €1.400.000

Author: Andrea David

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