Slim pickings

Of all the challenges in horology – for example, which diving watch goes the deepest or which chronograph splits seconds into the smallest increments – the one that completely baffles me is the quest for ultimate thinness.

Far be it for me, a slob who’s been trying to lose weight since the 1960s, to denigrate the achievements of Vacheron Constantin, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Zenith and Bulgari in that regard, but ultimately this competition can be boiled down to only one challenge: reducing the thickness of watch components

As simplistic or dismissive as that may sound, especially when coming from a cynic, I will be the first to acknowledge that the effort required to produce watches no thicker than two credit cards borders on the heroic. But, like the more spurious exploits in the Guinness Book of World Records – longest ear hair? Fastest time to eat a bowl of pasta? – the question begged is: “Why?”

When I put this to manufacturers, they admit under duress that it’s simply to prove that they can do it. That’s it. It’s got to the point that the two main rivals – Bulgari and Piaget – need qualifiers as the records they strive for seem to change hands from watch fair to watch fair. Sometime soon they will run out of categories and the honours will go beyond ‘thinnest automatic’ or ‘thinnest calendar’ to ‘thinnest watch made on a Tuesday’.

Make no mistake: producing a wristwatch under 2mm thick requires skills beyond that of programming a CNC machine to form the parts. But ultimately, the thinness fetishists also admit that devising the thinnest tourbillon or world timer or whatever is not the same as, say, creating a ‘lifetime’ lubricant or developing an absurdly extended power reserve.

This obsession with emaciated timepieces, however, is nothing new. During the era of pocket watches, the great makers prided themselves in reducing portable timepieces from the size and shape of a Granny Smith apple to something which actually fit into a pocket. By the time pocket watches were superseded in popularity by wristwatches, between 1900 and 1930, the more elegant models were a mere 10mm thick, while Patek Philippe produced an ultra-thin pocket watch in the 1960s which tipped the calipers at 7.4mm. (Amusingly, it was only 47mm in diameter, which describes a number of today’s more macho diving watches.)

“Patek made a pocket watch that was 7.4mm thick”

If you’re scratching your head about the drive for thinness because your iPhone has more processing power than NASA circa-1968, it should be pointed out that the accomplishments in watch thinness apply only to mechanical watches. Electronics are so advanced that a thin film can display the time. But that doesn’t negate the miracle of the first true milestone in anorexic wristwatches, even if it was quartz-powered.

In the mid-1970s, with quartz watches from Japan kicking the guano out of the Swiss watch industry, a contest emerged as to which country could produce the thinnest timepiece. The Swiss won with the ETA-developed Delirium, the first version of which was a mere 1.98mm thick. Concord was the best-known producer, but Eterna and Longines also produced Deliriums, with prices circa $8,000 in 1979.

Ultimately, the fourth incarnation would halve that dimension to 0.98mm, before someone deemed that enough was enough, the Japanese having ceded the crown to the Swiss. And at $60,000 for a thin quartz watch, it’s believed that less than 60 Delirium IVs were manufactured. To put that into context, Ferrari prices started at $35,000 in 1980. (Don't be too shocked. Every one of you can name a dozen current timepieces that cost more than a Ferrari circa-2025.)

If thin electronic watches are no challenge in the 21st century, hyper-thin mechanical timepieces remain the current willy-wagging arbiter of manufacture status. But I’m not the only one who’s baffled about it. Over the years, I’ve discussed the raisons d’être of thin watches with collectors and enthusiasts, watchmakers and, yes, manufacturers. Aside from the fact that thinner watches slip under a cuff more easily than thick ones, none could come up with any justification for chasing the ultimate in undernourished watches.

Most brands are realistic about reducing the thickness of watches, with both Tudor and Rolex shaving a fraction of a millimetre off recent releases unveiled at this year’s Watches and Wonders, while Christopher Ward’s exciting C12 Loco is on trend with its slimmer case. These are real-world watches with robust case integrity. They’re just not as bulky as their predecessors.

To provide a frame of reference  a credit card is 0.7mm thick, while a compact disc is 1.0mm thick. Think about that when you consider Richard Mille’s collaboration with Ferrari, the Grade 5 titanium RM UP-01, is 1.75mm thick. Oh, and it costs US $1,750,000. Konstantin Chaykin’s recent prototype, the ThinKing (great name, by the way), is 1.65mm thick. Even more impressive is this: In 2010, when a gaggle of watch manufacturers unveiled a load of ‘slim watches’, they boasted just of movements under 2mm thick – not the whole watch. The new wave of ‘Ozempic’ watches all come under that figure from glass to caseback.

Watchmakers point out that the necessary ultra-thin movements are harder to service and create pressures that watchmakers simply do not need. Regarding not the thinnest movement but certainly the smallest of all time, one watchmaker told me of his terror at having to deal with a Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 101, which measures only 14mm long by 4.8mm wide, and just 3.4mm thick. Servicing the actual watch owned by Queen Elizabeth II, he said there was absolutely no margin of tolerance, suggesting it was more akin to surgery. Having disassembled and reassembled a Piaget Altiplano, I can only describe working on a thin movement as ‘nerve-wracking’.

Another aspect of thin-vs-sensible is psychological, but it also applies to lightness. Whether we’re talking about watches which weigh very little simply because they’re thin or because they're made of carbon fibre or titanium, there’s a certain matter of concern to many watch enthusiasts. I number among those who like to feel the reassuring heft of a substantial watch on the wrist, even an elegant and indeed slim dress model such as a Patek Calatrava. However svelte the watch, a gold or steel case adds mass to what would otherwise be a relatively light timekeeper.

As with the Delirium, which a watchmaker told me could easily be folded in half, there’s a price to pay in this quest for ultimate thinness, not least the integrity of the watch case itself. I’m not suggesting for a second that you can bend a titanium watch case of only 2mm thickness but it doesn’t exactly inspire the confidence of a Rolex Deep Sea.

Perhaps one day the watchmakers wandering down this cul-de-sac of metaphorical starvation will reach the same conclusion as an apocryphal Japanese electronics manufacturer. For decades, the running gag was that the Japanese would miniaturise anything and everything they could possibly reduce in size. Eventually, they came a cropper when they applied this logic to a vibrator.