Excellent description of what is happening at TAG Heuer:

At TAG Heuer, Guy Sémon, a former French navy pilot and physicist, has led the charge to transform the brand’s research and development team, which now has 52 people, into a stealth haute horlogerie unit dedicated to developing, and marketing, the world’s most accurate chronographs.

Since the introduction in 2004 of TAG’s first concept watch, the V4, which employed an innovative transmission system using gears and belts no thicker than a human hair, the brand has produced a series of high-speed chronographs that strive to reach the limits of mechanical accuracy.

In 2011, the team introduced the Mikrograph, a 50Hz chronograph with a regulating system accurate to 1/100th of a second.

Next came the Mikrotimer, a 500Hz chronograph accurate to 1/1,000th of a second, and after that, the Mikrogirder, a 1,000Hz chronograph that was accurate to an unprecedented 5/10,000th of a second, featuring the first new mechanical regulator since Christiaan Huygens, the Dutch mathematician and scientist, invented the spiral balance spring in 1675.

Last year, TAG took it a step further with the Mikrotourbillon. Priced from 50,000 to 250,000 Swiss francs, or about $53,000 to $267,000, the models were sold in extremely limited series.

At the Baselworld luxury watch and jewelry fair this week, TAG will present two new timepieces, the commercial Carrera Mikrograph Pendulum and the concept Mikropendulum, that reflect its synthesis of traditional expertise and cutting-edge materials science.

“The department of R.&D. at TAG Heuer is like an orchestra playing not Mozart, but a modern symphony,” Mr. Sémon said. “To play it, I have to find the best watchmakers and engineers.”

Very nice summary . . . so much fun rooting for the TAG Heuer team!!

Jeff

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: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/fashion/25iht-acaw-technology25.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1
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