They took on the challenge and their solution for the tick-tock was to design a whole new escapement called a ‘silent crank’. Barberini is said to have approached Rome-based clockmakers the Campani brothers, run by Giuseppe, Matteo, and Pietro Tomasso, with the dual problem. What was worse, he told Barberini, was that lying there awake, he could not even check the time in the dark. Pope Alexander VII, newly appointed to the position in 1655, was complaining to his trusted aide, Cardinal Barberini, that the tick-tocks of the clock in his living quarters in the Vatican – seemingly louder in the dead of the night – meant he could not get a wink of sleep. The story goes back to the mid 17th century when the Pope was believed to have been struggling to sleep. Released in 1978, it featured the thinnest self-winding perpetual calendar calibre. The reference 5548 is a good example of this. On the other, the watchmakers in Le Brassus invested in developing ultra-thin automatic perpetual calendars, housed in slim, precious-metal cases of the kind customers expected from the brand. The Royal Oak presented a distinct new epoch for what was one of Switzerland’s most traditional brands. On the one hand, it unveiled an industrial design by Gérald Genta in stainless steel, totally reimagining what a luxury watch could be.
Audemars Piguet approached the situation from two directions. Many were forced to rethink their purpose on an even deeper level, now that accuracy was no longer a pillar they could lean on. While smaller watchmakers withered away, the bigger houses questioned how much of their identity, so inextricably tied to mechanical watchmaking, they would risk losing by adopting this new technology.
As with many stories in the watch industry, we find the origins of this one in the Quartz Crisis.
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