Hands-On: Ferdinand Berthoud Naissance d’une Montre 3: A Return To How Watchmaking Used To Be Done

The time display is legible despite the small size. The watch, in the marine chronometer style for which FB is known, places the display focus on the long yet delicate blued central seconds hand, which runs along the dial flange, crafted in white gold. All the indices, whether the seconds or the main time display, are engraved freehand. 

In the photos below, you can also see the split bi-metallic Guillaume balance. Throughout the history of watchmaking, friction, moisture, and temperature have been the main enemies of reliability. Temperature fluctuations can wreak havoc on hairsprings, especially those made before the introduction of more temperature-stable alloys, and accuracy was a life-or-death issue in the era of marine chronometers. To compensate, in the 1700s, watchmakers began using a combination of materials for balances, a practice Ferdinand Berthoud quickly adopted. Charles-Edouard Guillaume’s breakthrough in 1899 (creating a new alloy for bi-metallic balances) was so remarkable that it not only lowered temperature errors from 1.9 to 0.3 seconds per day, but he also received a Nobel Prize for his effort.