To date, its titanium tourbillon cage is one of the smallest in the world with a diameter of 7.2 mm and one of the lightest, weighing just 0.123 grams.
This model is known to watch enthusiasts as the Tourbillon Automatic Râ because Jacqueline Dimier’s design gave the tiny regulator (one of the smallest ever produced) the appearance of the sun, its rays spreading across the dial.
This complicated wristwatch is produced for a few years until 1992 in 401 pieces. It opened a new avenue for Haute Horlogerie, which then revived prestigious mechanisms, including the tourbillon watches.
Thirty years after Jacqueline Dimier’s model, the AP Manufacture, known for its ability to innovate, launches a series of research and development models. In 2015, Audemars Piguet presented its first prototype, the RD#1 Royal Oak Concept Répétition Minutes Supersonnerie.
The result of eight years of research in collaboration with the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) and an expert panel of watchmakers, engineers, musicians and sound specialists, this watch incorporates Supersonnerie technology.
This system, the subject of three patents, combining a percussion mechanism and an innovative cabinet architecture, marks a significant advance in terms of acoustic performance, diffusion volume and tonal beauty.
Presented at SIHH that same year, the RD#1 will enable the Manufacture to launch a year later the marketable version of the Royal Oak Concept Répétition Minutes Supersonnerie, winner of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève in 2016 in the “Mechanical Exception”, to bring to market “category.”.
In 2019, AP launched the Royal Oak Calendar Perpetual Ultra-Thin Automatic 41mm, the innovative prototype of which was presented at SIHH a year earlier under the name RD#2.
This calendar watch, which has a case thickness of 6.3mm, houses a movement that is only 2.89mm thick, making it the thinnest automatic calendar watch in the world at the time.
To achieve this feat, the calendar features normally arranged on three levels have been merged into one. The experts at the manufactory have also developed two patented innovations relating to the integration of the month end cam in the date wheel and the assignment of the month cam to the month wheel.
The Royal Oak Calendar Perpetual Ultra-Plat Automatic marks a turning point in the history of complicated watches and will bring Audemars Piguet the Grand Prix de l’Aiguille d’Or at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève in November 2019.
This year, the Manufacture Le Brassus unveils its new technical breakthrough with the Royal Oak Extra-Plat Automatic Flying Tourbillon.