The Opera Musical Watch by Jacob & Co. combines two traditional Swiss crafts: on the one hand the cylinders and combs of mechanical music boxes; on the other, the complicated mechanics of a high-end watch movement. Two cylinders are mounted on two of the four axes emanating from the centre of the movement, with the two remaining axes reserved for Jacob & Co.’s signature triple-axis tourbillon movement and the subsidiary hour and minute dial.
The two cylinders are driven by a central flywheel and play a 30-second melody consisting of 120 notes, each of which is played as the tiny studs on the cylinder make contact with the individual blades of the comb, whose different lengths create the different notes. As the cylinders turn to play the melody, the entire assembly on which they are fixed, including the tourbillon and the hour and minute dial, rotates 120 degrees around the dial.
Jacob & Co. developed an entirely new mechanical movement specifically for this model. The manually wound calibre JCFM02 usies titanium components for excellent sound propagation but also for weight considerations. The 646 components of the movement fit inside a diameter of just 43mm and as a result the case of the Opera Musical Watch is actually 3mm smaller in diameter than that of the Astronomia models.
A pusher located on the case middle activates the melody (Memory by Andrew-Lloyd Webber from the musical Cats) and thus the rotation of the movement. Those familiar with the Jacob & Co. triple axis tourbillon will also notice a significant change in its mechanical ballet, since the tourbillon now rotates around its inner cage once in 40 seconds, its intermediate cage in three minutes and its outer cage in eight minutes – faster than on the existing Astronomia models.
The Jacob & Co. Opera Musical Watch comes in two different versions. The first shows the bare bones of the mechanical workings beneath the large transparent sapphire dome. The second features music-themed adornments: sheet music decorating one of the combs, a piano decorating the other, the tips of the comb emerging to look like the keys on the piano, which are struck by the pins on the cylinder as it turns. The musical pièce de résistance is the off-centre dial in 18-carat rose gold whose structure evokes that of a stringed instrument.
SOURCE:http://en.worldtempus.com/article/jacob-et-co-opera-musical-watch-23649.html
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