F.P. Journe Centigraphe Souveraine: For When No Ordinary Chronograph Will Do!

The F.P. Journe Centigraphe Souveraine is a pretty incredible piece of haute horlogerie.  Looking to time a nice stroll through the park? Or, perhaps you have super-human reflexes and would like to measure the speed of an asteroid caroming through the atmosphere?  With the Centigraphe, you can do both, thanks to an exceptional manually wound chronograph movement (naturally an exclusive development of Francois-Paul Journe). 

This complex mechanism features three subdials, each of which are marked with a time scale, and a tachymeter.  Triggering the rocker switch on the right side of the watch  sets the hands into motion–at this moment, the immediate attention getter is the red foudroyante “flying-seconds” hand at left, which travels around its scale once each second; because of this unique hand and the 100th second calibration of its tachymeter, you can actually time something that is moving at 360,000 kilometers per hour! ( Put another way, that’s 1/3000th the speed of light!) Continue Reading… »