Renowned watch constructor, artist, and also man with a heart, François-Paul has dedicated his latest creation, the Centigraphe, to help advance medical research in favour of brain and spinal cord disorders through donating 30% of the profit of each Centigraphe to the ICM.

François-Paul Journe joined the founding members of the ICM (Institute for Brain and Spinal Cord Disorders) in laying the first stone of the future ICM building.



During the event, he announced his commitment to support the ICM in its fight against brain and spinal cord diseases. Renowned watch constructor, artist, and also man with a heart, François-Paul has dedicated his latest creation, the Centigraphe, to help advance medical research in favour of brain and spinal cord disorders through donating 30% of the profit of each Centigraphe to the ICM.

The founding members of ICM aspire to establish and maintain an international research centre providing the latest technologies, a unique project that will group sick patients, doctors, close to 600 researchers, engineers and technicians in one center.

The Centigraphe Souverain
François-Paul Journe’s spectacular new watch for 2007, the Centigraphe Souverain, is a mechanical chronograph unlike any that has ever been made before.



The hand-wound movement measures elapsed times from one hundredth of a second to 10 minutes on three dials, each with a time scale in red and a tachometer scale in black. The tachometer scales convert times into speeds ranging from 6 km/h — the walking pace — to 360,000 km/h, well above the escape velocity of a rocket going into low-level orbit.

The flying-seconds hand at 10 o’clock goes around the dial in one second on a scale marked in hundredths of a second, making it theoretically possible to time an object moving at 360,000 km/h, or approximately 1/3000ths of the speed of light.

The chronograph is started, stopped and zeroed by a rocker at 2 o’clock in the caseband instead of the usual buttons on either side of the crown — an ergonomic solution that has been granted a patent. The rocker turns a column-wheel that activates the levers in the start, stop and zero sequence in a conventional way.

A second patent has been granted for the ingenious configuration of the mechanism, which effectively isolates the chronograph from the timekeeping function. This means the amplitude of the balance is unaffected when the chronograph is running.

Source: Montres Journe

www.fpjourne.com

www.icm-institute.org

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