The world's first watch with four sides
First face
The Recto face of the Reverso Hybris Mechanica Calibre 185 is a powerful statement that epitomizes la Grande Maison's mastery of the expression of civil time.
The perpetual calendar is a centuries-old mechanism that always displays the correct date despite the irregular number of days in each month, leap years included. Highlighting the precision of the Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 185 construction, the perpetual calendar indications are instantaneous and change at the stroke of midnight.
A watch of such prestige required perfect legibility of the grande date. Our watchmakers created a completely innovative system of date display discs in order to accommodate the dimensions of the flying tourbillon at 7 o’clock. This new compact mechanism is patented.
As one of the main protagonists of the masterpiece, a flying tourbillon occupying the 7 o’clock position makes one rotation a minute continuously varying the position of the balance in order to achieve a single corrected average time measurement.
Second face
The verso face of the Quadriptyque case is a virtuoso tour de force and a modern expression of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s history as "The Sound Maker", a master and innovator of chiming watches.
The striking inner workings of the Reverso Quadriptyque are completely exposed alongside a secondary time display, indicating the same time as the recto dial, but in a jumping-hours and peripheral-minutes format. In order to reduce the overall thickness of the timepiece, this time indication is driven by the mechanism of the minute repeater.
To offer some of the loudest and clearest chiming minute repeaters, Jaeger-LeCoultre has developed several unique innovations including: a silent chime governor, crystal gongs, a square cross-sectional profile of the gongs and trebuchet hammers. With just a slide of the lever located just above the crown, the Quadriptyque unleashes its melody.
First, a series of low notes, correlating to the number of hours. Second, an alternating couplet of high and low notes, corresponding to the quarter-hours. And to conclude the melody, a succession of high notes, indicating the number of minutes to be added to the elapsed quarters.
Debuting in the Reverso Hybris Mechanica Calibre 185 is a completely novel engineering of the chiming components to create a seamless chime with no pauses in between the hours, quarters and minutes.
Third face
For the first time ever in the history of Mechanical horology, Jaeger-LeCoultre unites three displays of lunar information in a single wristwatch. This unique microMechanical combination of indications allows the determination of eclipse events and rare lunar phenomena such as supermoons.
Occupying the top half of the interior face of the cradle is a massive representation of the phases of the moon in the Northern Hemisphere.
A domed representation of the Earth, micro-painted in enamel, with a hemispherical moon in eccentric orbit around it represents the anomalistic cycle, showing the varying distance between the Earth and Moon.
A counter with a three-dimensional micro-sculpted pink-gold sun orbited by a tiny hemispherical moon shows the draconic cycle, showing when the path of the Moon intersects with the orbit of the Earth around the Sun.
Fourth face
On the exterior face of the cradle, a representation of the phases of the Moon in the Southern Hemisphere is shown: a star-flecked sky chart, engraved and lacquered in a gradient of blue shades forms the backdrop to the pink-gold moon.
The cradle display has been a major challenge for our watchmakers. First, they had to create a mechanism able to reproduce these three cycles of different length. Then, this mechanism had to be set directly into the cradle itself, without any additional movement plates that would increase the thickness of the watch. Finally, they needed to develop an innovative solution to set these indications.
Know-how
Even after 188 years of relentless innovation and savoir-faire, Jaeger-LeCoultre continues to break new boundaries in the world of fine Mechanical watchmaking. Over its 6 years of research and development, our watchmakers created a completely new movement from scratch that is fully integrated with exceptional complications. Encompassing over 800 components, among them a hundred exclusively for the cradle display, its movement is a new benchmark in the art of fine watchmaking.
Thickness
Thanks to nearly two centuries of expertise and a thoroughly modern approach to innovation, the most complicated Reverso is also one of the most wearable.
A unique box
The Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Hybris Mechanica Calibre 185 comes in an exceptional presentation box with a built-in mechanism that allows the wearer to quickly and intuitively set all the calendar and astronomical displays of the watch after a period of being unworn.
A two-position crown on the side of the box is used to first set the number of days that have elapsed since the watch was last worn. With the Quadriptyque set within the correction support frame, the box corrector crown can then be extended to its second position and wound to rapidly bring the watch to the current date for all calendar and astronomical indications. There is no risk of overcorrecting the watch or damaging the movement, since the entire process is controlled by the box corrector mechanism.