![]() A visit to the Our first stop in the Ulysse Nardin building already was a real highlight: the department for technical development. Secured by heavy doors and key locks, restricted even to most UN employees, this department is the heart of what Ulysse Nardin is today. A small company that renown for its endless stream of innovations and novelties, clearly must put an emphasis on its development potential. The rooms we entered were therefore stuffed with CAD workstations with many young people sitting before them. Since the department had not been 'tidied up' prior to our arrival, we saw all the goodies UN is currently working on, even some of the company's well-kept secrets. Behind closed doors: the development department
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Of course, we had to promise to keep our mouths shut and our fingers firmly knotted, so we would neither speak nor write about the innovations we could glance upon. However, the stuff looked so complicated, that we could not figure out any details anyway. That this department does not only develop future mechanics, but is also here for troubleshooting with existing ones, we could see with the double direct escapement of the marvellous Freak. According to my sources, there were some minor problems with the early Freak watches, so we could see the specialists frantically working on modified movement parts, checking them for their functionality. |
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After that, our tour reached some more conventional areas: Stairs up and down, we hasted from room to room, visiting the watchmakers in their ateliers. Besides the assembly of movements and case parts, we saw employees busy decorating bridges and plates, checking the flawless functions of complicated watches, and many watch movers endlessly turning the finished products, during their in-house testing procedure. Also very interesting was the 'archive' of a multitude of movement parts. Painstakingly categorized and inventoried, thousands of vintage watch parts are resting in dozens of cabinets and drawers. Famous, nearly mythical names of times gone long ago, adorned the small signs: Venus, E. Piguet, Landeron, to name but a few. The historical value of this parts archive cannot be overestimated, and it will be great if some of them can be used to return some old watches into working condition again.
The movements of the Perpetual GMT are checked and assembled (pic of the watch © Ulysse Nardin) |
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