Because it's cool to make such a thin watch

Recently [Richard Mille] and Ferrari (yes, that Ferrari) announced the thinnest mechanical watch ever made, the RM UP-01.

It measures just 1.75mm thick (~1/16 inch). The aesthetics are questionable and the price isn't even listed on the page, but we suspect it's a pretty hefty sum. But putting those two things aside, we'd like to step back and appreciate this as a work of art. It's not a practical watch by any stretch of the imagination. This watch is the equivalent of a human-powered airplane. Inconvenient, expensive and not as efficient as other modern mechanically powered solutions. But that doesn't make it any less impressive.

Since it's so thin, a regular assortment of stacked gears wasn't an option. Instead, the gears were spread across the surface of the watch, which led to a thin dial. This means that the winding is manual to save space, and a single winding will take around 45 hours. The heart of any mechanical watch is the escapement. So they had to redesign the exhaust to be flatter, removing the guard pin and the safety roller, instead of using the anchor fork to tilt the lever in the event of stress or shock. unexpected.

The design is amazing but perhaps equally remarkable is the fact that it could be machined. Machined from titanium with one micron of precision, which is an incredible feat if you've seen a wild discussion about measurements. The smaller and more precise you are, the steeper the difficulty curve.

A short teaser is available after the break.