I have come across many people who where a Tourbillon watch( well not that many) , when I commented on there their watch, they say proudly its a Patek or a A.P (short for Audemars Piguet) etc Tourbillon.
I say WOW what does a Tourbillon do? Aand 95% of the time they have no idea whatsoever.
Who wears a Tourbillon?
There are two kind of people:,
The first are Watch collectors who love watches and can talk to you for an hour about the mechanism and about how every part works together like a beautiful symphony.
The other kind are neuveaux riche (new money) who want a very expensive watch must buy it.
What is a Tourbillon movement and what makes it very expensive?
First of all there are very few companies in the world (mostly Swiss) who can produce a Tourbillon movement, and they produce the Tourbillon movements for most of the Swiss luxury watch companies.
Second of all, a Tourbillon was one of the first watches to keep perfect time. I don’t mean that it keeps time pretty well, it keeps time perfectly. Other watches are jolted or moved around a bit and they lose or gain a second or two. This is because the Tourbillon was one of the first watches (in 1795) to have an escapement built in. Escapement means “whirlwind ” in French. The escapement, the little rotating circle on the face, keeps the watch´s kinetic energy longer by acting against gravity to conserve the watch’s energy, no matter how much the watch-wearer moves.
This is important for keeping the watch accurate.
Here are some additional links about Tourbillon—I’ll Twitter them for you, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourbillon
www.horology-stuff.com/watches/tourbillon.html
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1058272
The three links are about how Tourbillon works.
