Symmetry In Motion

Armin Strom, one of only a few brands to have mastered resonance, releases its most visually pleasing (and useful!) resonance watch yet.

- CHARMIAN LEONG

WATCHMAKERS HAVE ACHIEVED all sorts of remarkable things in the over 500-year history of watchmaking. We now have watches that chime, watches with multiple tourbillons on multiple axes, and watches that tell us when sunrises or sunsets occur without looking out the window.

However, the resonance watch remains an exceptionally rare and highly complex horological achievement.

Imagine two movements running independently in a single watch case but influencing each other for greater accuracy and stability—this is the magic of resonance. The concept was introduced by Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock, in the 17th century. He observed that swinging pendulums eventually synchronised with stationary pendulums, allowing them to stabilise each other’s motion through shared vibrations.

It wasn’t long before horologers realised resonance’s potential. During the early 1800s, French clockmaker Antide Janvier began making double pendulum clocks, as did Abraham-Louis Breguet. However, Breguet’s legendary ingenuity enabled him to miniaturise the concept into a pocket watch. Only three of these pocket watches are known to exist, and the last one sold at Christie’s in 2012 for over 4 million Swiss francs (S$6 million).