Horological Meandering

first of all I would like to introduce myself as being the person in charge of LEROY, my name is Olivier Müller. You may know that I have worked before on another project - together with Karsten Frassdorf who made it work ! -  in which we developed the "échappement naturel" that you are writing about. And I had also the luck to meet Mr Georges Daniels for a whole day when I was working at Omega (1999) and who explained me how he came to the idea of making the co-axial escapement (see hereunder).

I'm a little bit surprised on the assumptions that you are making without having seen our escapement. I think you are confusing the readers on this forum with wrong assertions and comparing a very interesting escapement and movement overall with something that has nothing in common with your AS movement.

Now a little bit of history for your enlightenment :

Pierre Le Roy (1717-1785) is the inventor of the free balance which is the base of any wristwatch escapement. He is also the inventor of the direct impulse escapement which was before the invention of the detent escapement - to which he made a major contribution and some historians give him the credit of being the inventor, which we don't do ! - which later on inspired Mr Breguet for his "échappement naturel", which much later inspired Mr Georges Daniels for his co-axial escapement (1970's). In fact those inventions initiated by Pierre Le Roy inspired Mr Jules (and not James !) Pellaton to apply for a patent on October 22 1922, that is 150 years later, for his direct impulse escapement inspired by the works of Le Roy and later Breguet.

Pierre Le Roy was also the first watch maker to understand and apply the principes of isochronism which is the base of any chronometrical precision (Catherine Cardinal in "Ferdinand Berthoud", 1984, MIH : "It is now admitted that Le Roy, long before Berthoud, had not only described but also applied to his marine chronometers the fundamental principals of modern chronometry...".

I come now to our calibre L200 and its direct impulse escapement with double terminal curves hairspring :

Unlike others we pay tribute to people who are are the genuine inventors of horological inventions. As you have seen on the pictures we have a very unusual coq bridge which is in fact a cage, called "Cage Brun", this bridge was invented in the beginning of the 20st century by a Swiss watch maker called Mr. Charles Brun.

We chose this escapement for its efficiency which is 40%  better than a Swiss lever escapement, but requires also higher skills and precision as does the "échappement naturel". To give you a better idea of the principles of our escapement, it is comparable to a "Robin" escapement (1793) which was invented 50 years after Mr. Le Roy escapement.

I would like to invite you and your fellow colleagues of ThePuristS to visit us at Baselworld (booth A51, hall 1.1, pls take an appointment !) so that you get a better idea of the tremendous work done by Karsten Frassdorf and our team at Manufacture LEROY. My personal opinion is that one should judge on facts and not beliefs, hence respecting the work of daring watchmakers. 

Thank you for understanding !

Olivier

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