Its titanium tourbillon cage remains to this day one of the smallest in the world with a diameter of 7.2 mm, as well as one of the lightest with a weight of just 0.123 grams.
This model is known to timepiece 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 whose rays spread over the dial.
This complicated wristwatch will be produced for a few years in 401 copies until 1992. It opened a new path for Haute Horlogerie which then revives prestigious mechanisms, including those of tourbillon watches.
Thirty years after Jacqueline Dimier’s model, the AP manufacture, known for its ability to innovate, is launching a series of Research and Development models. In 2015, Audemars Piguet unveiled its first prototype RD#1 Royal Oak Concept Répétition Minutes Supersonnerie.
The result of eight years of research in partnership with EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) and with a panel of experts made up of watchmakers, engineers, musicians and sound specialists, this watch incorporates Supersonnerie technology.
The subject of three patents, this system, which combines a striking mechanism and an innovative box architecture, marks a significant progression in terms of acoustic performance, diffusion volume and sound beauty.
Presented at the 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” category. “.
In 2019, AP launched the Royal Oak Calendar Perpetual Ultra-Thin Automatic 41 mm, the innovative prototype of which was presented a year earlier at the SIHH under the name RD#2.
This calendar watch, whose case is 6.3 mm thick, houses a movement that is only 2.89 mm thick, making it at that time the thinnest automatic calendar wristwatch in the world.
To achieve this feat, the calendar functions generally mounted on three levels have been brought together on the same plane. The Manufacture’s experts have also developed two patented innovations relating to the integration of the end-of-month cam into the date wheel and the association of the month cam to the month wheel.
Marking a turning point in the history of complicated watches, the Royal Oak Calendar Perpetual Ultra-Plat Automatic will earn 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 in Le Brassus reveals its new technical breakthrough with the Royal Oak Extra-Plat Automatic Flying Tourbillon.