What is a Tourbillon?
The tourbillon is a form of escapement for wristwatches or pocket watches. Some clocks have also been built with tourbillon escapements, even there is little reason for them. The motive behind the tourbillon was simple: people don’t stand still! To obtain maximum accuracy from a timepiece it essential that the movement of the oscillator must be isochronal – that is, it must keep regular and predictable time. Unfortunately this is difficult to achieve when the wearer of the watch insists on moving the wrist around. Such movements cause the stresses and friction on the watch mechanism to vary, along with the influence of gravity. A watch that tells perfect time when held at one angle might not do so at another. With clocks this is not a problem – since a clock is always in the same position, it is possible to adjust for any error. With a constantly moving wristwatch the error is itself constantly changing.
A tourbillon is a small piece of equipment which can be included in the casing of a watch to house the balance wheel and escapement. At one time, tourbillons were viewed as critical for timekeeping accuracy, in addition to being a very fine example of a watchmaker’s art. Modern watches do not require this piece of horological equipment, although luxury watches are sometimes made with tourbillons to make them seem more precise and valuable. The idea behind the tourbillon was that the effects of gravity on personal watches had to be offset by something in the mechanics of the watch. Watchmakers believed that personal watches grew inaccurate over time because of the fact that the watch was kept constantly in motion, with innumerable tiny shifts over the course of the day which would slowly pull the workings of the watch out of sync. As evidence to support their claim, they pointed to fixed city clocks and standing clocks which managed to keep time very well, suggesting that the key differ
