“The Chronoworks movement has shown a 45-percent improvement in terms of performance. We have elevated the power reserve from 70 to 100 hours”

points where we could improve the efficiency of the movement. It’s a little bit like a Formula One racing team, where they are constantly trying out new solutions using advanced technology, which are to be introduced to other series in the future. DA: So, what are those points? JPG: The first thing we identified is that the B01 is losing a little bit of energy due to friction on the rubies in the baseplate and on the gear train bridge. To counter that, the team developed a special type of ceramic that has a very low friction potential. If you feel it, it’s like soap, very smooth but hard enough to replace the jewels. As a result, we have eleven jewels less in the Chronoworks movement.

The main plate and the gear train bridge are also not made of brass anymore, but of ceramic, too. The type of the ceramic is boron nitrite (BN). For the bridge and the main plate, we can then directly remove the jewels, and they now work without oiling.

Another thing that we discovered was that at a frequency of 4Hz, a movement stops and restarts superfast. So, the moving part has to be as light as possible to improve efficiency. That’s why all the wheel trains have been replaced with silicon in order to drastically reduce the weight, because silicon is 50 percent lighter than the standard alloy used in such wheels.

At the same time, we are using silicon not only due to its weight, but also due to the manufacturing process, as we can create very complex shapes with it. So, we made new designs for the anchor escapement to reduce energy loss in the movement. DA: How effective were these changes in upping the watch’s performance? JPG: Well, these are not all of them. We also took care of the balance wheel, which now uses nickel. And, in fact, the fifth innovation we’re introducing in the Chronoworks movement is specific to chronographs. Without going into the details, basically we normally lose energy from the power reserve when activating the chronograph due to friction. So, we adjusted it by removing the friction spring and using a nickel wheel instead. This means that the watch will have the same power reserve regardless of the chronograph being on or off. It’s quite an improvement.

All in all, the Chronoworks’ B01 movement has shown a 45-percent improvement in terms of performance. We have successfully elevated the power reserve from 70 hours to 100 hours. So, we’re wasting less energy, but still making the movement in the same size or volume. This is the aim of the Chronoworks team. And the watch is called the Superocean Heritage Chronoworks, limited to 100 pieces. The case, by the way, is ceramic, too, but zircon ceramic—not BN. DA: It seems that Breitling is becoming more and aggressive in developing in-house movements. JPG: When we started the project to conceive, develop and industrialize our own in-house mechanical chronograph movements in 2004, we really wanted to be ready in 2009 with a reliable product. That’s why failure was not an option. We were seriously learning watchmaking, and we didn’t want to innovate just for the sake of innovation. We gained experience