From SwissWatchExpo. One of the most overlooked complication movements out there,
but definitely one of the coolest ones - the rattrapante. What is it? What does it
do? I'm going to show you all that right here at Fresh from the Showcase from SwissWatchExpo.
Fresh from the Showcase, at SwissWatchExpo. We're talking about the rattrapante complication. This
is a cool, cool complication and one you should definitely, shouldn't overlook.
I think a lot of people, maybe they're afraid of the word because it looks hard to pronounce.
It's not, you can do it. Say it with me - rattrapante. And
a lot of times, I guess people just don't know what it is. Um, but I think it's an
underappreciated complication that you should definitely be into because it's really the logical
conclusion of a chronograph. It's great to have a chronograph on your, watch, you're timing things.
I mean, uh, you know, your, your timing, the eggs, how much time they've got left, your timing, your,
your kid, as they run the track meet -- all sorts of different things you could use the
chronograph for on your watch. I wonder which way is faster to work. You can time it.
But the real rub comes in with when you're timing something, you need to be able to record the time
for an interval and also keep the total going. So if you stop a regular chronograph, your race car's
going around and around the track, it finishes lap one. You want to know the lap times you stop it,
but now you've stopped the whole thing. And so you don't have the full time that
has elapsed of the entire race. Well, that's where the rattrapante comes in. The word rattrapante
is roughly a French word that roughly means catch-up. So what it does is it allows you to
stop and record a time, but then still catch up to where it would have been if you had never stopped
it. So I have three here for your excitement. It's a movement that not a lot of companies make,
because it is extremely complicated, extremely hard to make, and really
not very expensive compared to how complicated it is. So you should definitely look into it.
The three we have here, we have a Breitling Navitimer and it uses the B03 movement,
which is based on the B01 - it's their in-house manufacturer movement. It's a 70 hour power
reserve, real low friction movement. And they added the rattrapante function to it. And now
it's B03. So that's a 45 millimeter Navitimer, I'm sure you're familiar with that. Watch
the other two here are from IWC. Um, this one is from the Le Petit Prince series. It's the
Saint Exupery, which is all noted on the back of the watch and everything. This one I brought out
just because with the white background to the dial, it's essentially the same, watch the two,
just with a different look, the bracelet or the strap and the different dial colors.
But we brought in this one, so you can really see how this works.
You have a normal chronograph. We could start here and you can see the, the red chronograph hand is
going. And if we stop like a normal chronograph and reset, just like normal, everything's fine.
But this pusher up here is what is added to the mix. That makes it more interesting. So let's just
say, we're timing our car. It's going around the track. And now here it comes. It's just finished
lap number one, of course, that's the short lap, but we'll pretend we pushed that one instead.
And you can see the yellow second hand. The chronograph hand is still going. The red one
stopped so I can record the time, the yellow one is still going as if nothing ever happened.
I can press this one again. It'll make the red one catch up and then continue along.
And then if you want to stop and reset the whole thing, there we go. So it's super easy to use,
the way IWC made it with a third pusher. The way they handled it at Breitling
is they put a third pusher in the middle of the crown. So when you start here with the Breitling
again, you can see the two second hands move together. If I stopped with the middle one,
then the white tipped one has stopped. So you can record that time. And the red one keeps
going as if nothing happened, press it again, to catch up, stop the whole thing and reset.
So it's that easy. It looks really simple when you're using it because they have
designed in such a great function to the form that it just makes perfect sense, and it's super easy
to use, but going on behind the scenes there, it's a really complicated, really hard to make watch
and one that has a practical use to it. For a lot of people in a lot of different scenarios,
you might like to record some sort of an interval, but still have the full tally going. So fresh from
the showcase. Give us a call. You can even put the word "rattrapante" in the search window and
our website where it says search 2000 plus watches up top. But if you get confused on the spelling or
how to find these, give us a call, we'll be happy to help you sort them through at SwissWatchExpo.