The Tourbillon

Abraham Louis Breguet, the most brilliant watchmaker of all time, invented this mechanism around 1800 to improve the precision of pocket watches. The making of a tourbillon was however, extremely difficult and complicate.

However, there were some highly talented watchmakers who had the courage to rise to the challenge and to improve and innovate this invention. In 1922, the teacher Alfred Helwig created, at the watchmaker‘s school in Glashütte / Saxony, the first flying tourbillon. This variant represents the most difficult and noble type of the tourbillon.

Then as today, tourbillons were considered to be the highest challenging form in the art of watch making craft. Modern technologies began to demote the tourbillons technical uniqueness. Nevertheless, they do have their own right to exist. Today they represent the royal class of watch making and are the most complicate watches at all.

No other watch produces such fascination and admiration among experts and collectors as the tourbillon. Observing it‘s mechanism is found to be a mystical and mysterious experience, captivating and moving for the viewer. Therefore,
reputable watch companies offer tourbillon wristwatches in their collection.

All parts of these watches are being designed and manufactured using CAD- and other high-technical methods. Assembling the machine-made parts and movements by specialists is the only part of hand work in these watches.
 
This is precisely the difference with Wilhelm Rieber‘s tourbillon construction. He designs and builds wrist- and pocket watches with flying tourbillon in pure handwork, in the memory of the brilliant inventor Abraham Louis Breguet, the master teacher Alfred Helwig and the outstanding master watchmakers of the pre-industrial era.