The USD 972,000 Deep Space Resonance is One of The First Watches With Acoustic Resonance

Vianney Halter, the luxurious Swiss watchmaker widely known for its best timepieces and credited with ushering in the independent watch making taking rebirth with his retro-futuristic wrist watch, the Antiqua, in the year 1998, has recently released a new timepiece—and it’s one of its kind.

The long span of experience taught a human a lot and twenty-five years is a pretty good long span. With twenty-five years of expertise in the making of the luxurious timepieces, the Deep Space Resonance is a triple-axis tourbillon equipped with an acoustic coupling mechanism assimilating two balance wheels. But this short description hardly explains anything about this wild piece of timekeeping.

A tribute to undulatory physics or the theory which explains about light transmitting as waves and ripples, this model by Deep Space Resonance is the product of an R&D effort Halter began in early 1996. It was started when he conceived of an acoustically resonant double-balance timepiece. The inspiration came by some of 18th-century watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet’s early efforts to attain resonance. Resonance is a physical phenomenon in which an external force or pressure or a vibrating system forces another system around it in order to vibrate with greater amplitude at a particular frequency of operation. Halter began to work on a model in 2007 utilizing a couple of Russian deck watches which were having identical gear trains. In order to procure the desired acoustic phenomenon, he performed an experiment to link their respective oscillators with a solid bridge, as in a tuning fork which was surely a success.

Later during 2016, scientific discovery of gravitational waves emerging from two collapsing black holes, measured by a resonance-based space-time seismograph, seized Halter’s imagination. In 2013, he introduced the Deep Space Tourbillon which then led to designing of the four dimensions which was the watch featured a triple-axis tourbillon surrounded by a display of time. He decided to use this model as the foundation for his upcoming resonating oscillators.

During 2019, He built a working demonstration of the two balances and spent all the time in 2020 designing a working prototype for the Deep Space Resonance wristwatch. By taking Halter’s sci-fi leanings into consideration, the dial of the manually wound model which comes with 65 hours of power reserve is a nod to the vernier caliper. (vernier caliper- a tool which is used to give a direct reading of the distance measured along with high accuracy and precision). To get the precise reading, a scale-like display was used on the measuring instrument; it features minutes appearing in a bottom aperture while hours and quarters in an aperture at the top.

Talking about the money it costs, so, the model, which retails for CHF 860,000 which is about $972,000, excluding taxes, shipping and insurance. This model is now available for ordering or pre-order. Halter says the first delivery will take place in early summer during this year. Due to the amount of work and designing required to create the Deep Space Resonance, Halter will not make more than two timepieces per year, according to a spokesperson.