In 1795, Abraham-Louis Breguet invented something the world didn't need. And that's exactly why we still talk about it 230 years later.

The tourbillon. A rotating cage housing the escapement and balance wheel, designed to neutralise the effect of gravity on timekeeping accuracy. In 1795 it was a genuine engineering solution — pocket watches sat in waistcoat pockets at fixed vertical angles, and gravity was a real enemy of precision.

Today? A modern wristwatch moves constantly on your wrist. The problem the tourbillon was built to solve barely exists anymore.

And yet a tourbillon can add €50,000 to the price of a watch overnight.

In this episode we go deep on everything. How the tourbillon actually works — the rotating cage, the escapement, the balance wheel, and why the mathematics behind it are genuinely beautiful. Why wa ...