Lange 1 Tourbillon

The “165 Years – Homage to F.A. Lange” anniversary collection pays tribute to the founder of Germany’s precision watchmaking industry and to the trailblazing creations devised in his manufactory: they are what kept the legend alive for four generations of the watchmaking dynasty in the first place. One of them is the Grand Complication with the serial number 42500, initiated by Emil Lange, the second son of the founder. Made in 1902, its Louis XVI case in 18-carat gold accommodates a chiming mechanism with a grand strike and a small strike, a minute repeater, a split-seconds chronograph with a The TOURBOGRAPH “Pour le Mérite” from the anniversary collectionminute counter and flying seconds, as well as a perpetual calendar with a moon-phase display. This one-of-a-kind watch, exceptional in every respect, was sent to Lange in a seriously corroded condition. Many of the 833 parts had to be painstakingly refash- ioned by specialists in the restoration workshop. But after several years of meticulous repair work, all components of the complicated mechanism work again – as perfectly as more than a hundred years ago. 

With three impressive timekeeping instruments that give a new face to the enduring watchmaking tradition of the Lange family as regards technical and aesthetic perfec- tion, Lange’s 21st-century watchmakers salute the spiritual legacy of their great mentor. The capabilities of the manufactory are expressed by all three models with a novel case metal developed exclusively for Lange. With a Vickers hardness of over 300, the 18-carat honey-coloured gold exclusively developed for Lange is about twice as hard as other gold alloys. Breathing beneath the hand-engraved balance cock made of the same material is a balance spring developed and manufactured in-house. It symbolises the innovative energy with which every Lange watch is endowed. A guilloched solid-gold dial and a sunburst finish on the three-quarter plate of the 1815 MOONPHASE and the crown wheel cock of the LANGE 1 TOURBILLON allude to the proud ancestral artisanship of the family tradition. A look at all three watches together – and at the concepts they embody – reaffirms Lange’s axiomatic claim “state-of-the-art tradition”. It lives in the Lange pocket watches of old as fervently as in the oeuvres crafted by today’s master watchmakers.

At the turn of the millennium, A. Lange & Söhne presented the LANGE1 TOURBILLON based on the legendary LANGE 1. At that time, it was not yet possible to achieve what Lange’s calibre engineers accomplished a few years later with the CABARET TOURBILLON: to directly and instantaneously stop the balance inside the rotating tour- billon cage. With this feat, they corrected an intrinsic flaw of the tourbillon mechanism that for two hundred years was considered to be the ne plus ultra of horological so- phistication. While the elaborate device elevated the rate accuracy of a watch by overcoming the effects of gravity, it could not be stopped, so the watch could not be set to the second. Lange’s ingenious solution to the problem – the patented stop-seconds mechanism – is now integrated in the LANGE 1 TOURBILLON of the anniversary collection as well. It expresses Lange’s long-standing principle of questioning the validity of even what is already considered perfect. 

The crowning conclusion of this rare opus is a mirror-polished bar made of honey- coloured gold that is precisely embedded in the dial and carries the tourbillon cage on the dial side. A further special feature of this watch is the fact that the one-minute tour- billon is suspended between diamond endstones on both sides. A hallmark that Ferdi- nand Adolph Lange once introduced to sign the 1A quality category of his pocket watches.