Watch firms create idea merchandise to behave as halos for the model, to infuse the common manufacturing fashions with new applied sciences, to interrupt data, and to problem rival firms.
Whereas the impetus driving Bulgari to be the thinness king is unclear. What’s clear is that amongst the manufacturers which have made record-breaking skinny watches — Piaget, Vacheron Constantin, Richard Mille, Bulgari — it’s an space of core competency the place Bulgari continues to interrupt probably the most data (thinnest: tourbillon, minute repeater, self-winding watch, self-winding tourbillon, chronograph GMT, tourbillon chronograph, and perpetual calendar).
At simply 1.70 mm thick, the Octo Finissimo Extremely COSC represents the thinnest mechanical timepiece ever made — and it’s COSC-certified as well.
The watch bests the earlier document holder, Richard Mille’s RM UP-01 Ultraflat Ferrari (1.75 mm) timepiece, by a barely distinguishable 0.05 mm. To place it in perspective, you’re not going to have the ability to see the distinction with the bare eye, and you’ll not even be capable to measure the case thickness precisely with any commonplace caliper, as an alternative, you want one thing like a micrometer (micrometer screw caliper).
Including additional context, the 1.75 mm thick RM UP-01 Ultaflat Ferrari has a 51 mm diameter case whereas the 1.70 mm record-breaking Octo Finissimo Extremely COSC case measures a much more wearable 40 mm diameter.
Taking Bulgari’s outdated document breaker (at 1.80 mm), which was the thinnest on this planet till the RM Up-01 arrived in July of 2022, the engineers saved the titanium case, and the 170-component hand-wound 4Hz caliber BVL 180, which has a 50-hour energy reserve and is simply 1.5 mm thick (with a tungsten carbide again), and lowered solely the thickness of the sapphire crystal by one-tenth of a millimeter.
Because of the excessive thinness, setting the Octo Finissimo Extremely COSC is as you’d count on, not as simple as an ordinary timepiece and so Bulgari created a devoted case with a digital readout that after you positioned the watch in it “the specified time is then programmed, and the adjustment cycle launched on the contact of a button. In a matter of seconds, the watch is completely adjusted and wound with impeccable precision.”
So whereas shaving the sapphire crystal down a tenth of a millimeter might not be thought-about revolutionary (relying on who you ask), the digital time-setting case actually is.
The Octo Finissimo Extremely COSC is restricted to twenty items at a not-so-thin retail of $529,000.
Images by Bulgari.
