 Above is Jaquet Droz's La Machine à Ecrire le Temps, a machine that has taken over ten years to build, and has thousands of moving parts. For those of you who speak French, you already know what it does. For everybody else, the machine does one thing, and one thing only: writes the time. That's it. When activated, the piece writes the time in hours and minutes, and then spits it out for you. And how much would you expect to pay for this marvel of technology? It took nearly a decade to develop this masterpiece with more than 1,200 components, including 84 ball bearings, 50 cams and 9 belts. Jaquet Droz's "La Machine à Ecrire le Temps" (The Machine that Writes the Time) is an implausible horological machine that was showcased at Baselworld 2009. The La Machine à Ecrire le Temps is an upshot of manufacturer Jaquet Droz's eternal quest for excellence. The project was the brainchild of Manuel Emch, president and head of artistic creation at Montres Jaquet Droz. It was developed by the engineers and artisans at the Manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. It's one of the most amazing horological sculptures to date that offers a perfect blend of tradition, kinetic art and high-tech horology. The awesome machine is placed in an elegant cage, with the aluminum fames fitted with a liquid crystal glass. So the possessors of the masterpiece can cover or unveil the whole movement to their liking. The mechanism gets activated with a simple touch and a stylus writes the time in hours and minutes. At 400,000 Swiss francs (US $342,275), it's not cheap, but it's the ultimate luxury any passionate watch collector or horological machine lover would love to own. |
