Panerai Luminor 1950 Tourbillon GMT
Nov 29, 2007
Officine Panerai has recently created a few of its own manufacture calibers, completely designed, developed and produced independently in its own workshops.
Among the four recently developed mechanisms, from the point of view of construction, the Panerai P. 2005 represents the most sophisticated caliber. On the base of this caliber, the manufacture has created the Luminor 1950 Tourbillon GMT, the timepiece that has successfully united tradition, sports characteristics, precision and technology.
The zest of the new Luminor watch is its 'tourbillon,' the complicated device invented by Abraham-Louis Breguet in the end of the 18th century. The tourbillon is responsible for eliminating errors in rate that appear as the result of changes in the gravity effect produced on the balance, and varying friction when the timepiece is in different positions.
Breguet constructed a special continuously rotating cage that contained the balance, escapement and relative pivots. This way the legendary watchmaker canceled out any variation in rate possible when the balance is put in some particular position by the balance put in the opposite position. Officine Panerai has used Breguet's remarkable invention and introduced its own innovations in this field.
As for the Panerai Luminor 1950 GMT, its cage is rotating on an axis that is parallel to the movement's base at right angles to the axis of balance oscillation. Moreover, the cage itself performs two rotations per minute. Due to these two innovations, the Panerai design improves the error-compensation.
Operating through a number of gear trains, the device is the distinction of the P.2005 calibre. The mechanisms is also different from all other tourbillons in production due to a combination of other details. The manually wound movement comprises 239 components, and has three spring barrels used for storing enough power for the timepiece to operate for the whole period of 6 days with no need for winding.
The mechanism has also incorporated the GMT function. The Luminor 1950 Tourbillon GMT sports a sapphire crystal back offering the exclusive view of the entire movement with the fascinating rotating tourbillon, and a hand moving over a circular arc and indicating the amount of power reserve left.
The Luminor 1950 is different from other sophisticated timepieces with a tourbillon escapement, as it does not show off this technical wonder; the tourbillon escapement is not visible on the dial through an opening cut in the dial.
The existence of the tourbillon is marked by one original detail. There is a small auxiliary dial in the left part of the dial with a little circular blue indicator and the continuous seconds hand. The indicator is linked to the tourbillon and moves twice as fast as the seconds hand - it performs one rotation every 30 seconds. The other small dial features a hand performing one rotation every 24 hours. The hand points at the inscriptions 'pm' and 'am', indicating the day or the night time.
The Luminor 1950 Tourbillon GMT is being put in production in a numbered limited edition, and will be available at a price of 79,000 Euro.