The Legend of Franck Muller - Westime

second time zone
third time zone
reference time
This is how it works
The dial of the Master Banker has two small subdials with the second and third time zones
displayed in hours and minutes. When you pull the crown to the first position and you turn
it clockwise, it sets the subdial on the left (the second time zone); when you turn it in the
opposite direction, it sets the subdial on the right (the third time zone). When you pull the
crown to the next position, it changes the central hands (for local or reference time). Each
of the three time zones can be manipulated independently via the crown alone without
changing the others.
So, I began thinking about this and there were many
possibilities as to how to achieve this goal. But I began
to reject many of my ideas because the mechanisms
were too complicated. One of the major goals of true
watchmaking is to achieve your aim with total integrity,
but by using the minimum number of parts available. For
example, if you can reduce the parts you need to make
something like this triple time-zone complication from
200 parts to 20 parts, you are 10 times less likely to have
anything go wrong. That is an enormous margin of safety
that you owe to the consumer who has placed his faith in
your timepiece. If you look at the most famous clocks or
watches, as I had the opportunity to do when restoring
pieces for Patek Philippe’s museum and others, you
realize that the best watchmakers always have this at the
forefront of their minds. The goal is to achieve the best
result with the least parts possible.”
Amazingly, inspiration came to Franck in the most
unlikely of places. He was overseeing the addition
of two buildings at Watchland when, suddenly, he
stopped in his tracks, in front of a daunting piece
of heavy machinery. He states, “I was looking at a
Caterpillar tractor, and the basic underpinnings of its
mechanics gave me the idea of how to solve the puzzle
of the Master Banker. What is incredible about this
solution is that if you were to take 100 watchmaking
engineers and put them in an office together, such is the
simplicity of the mechanism I arrived at that they would
never find it; or even if they found it, the first 99 would
all come up with far too complicated solutions.”
Franck knew that as complicated as the watch was,
he had to create something easy to use. It was at this
moment that the concept of operating all three timezone
displays, as well as the date, with a single crown
came to him. Franck adds, “Later, we augmented the
watch to have day and night indicators for the second and
third time zones as well. What was great was that the
watch seemed complicated, but it was fantastically
simple to use. If a client becomes frustrated with
utilizing his watch, he will stop using it. Everyone could
comprehend it. With this model,we began to sell 5,000
more watches per year — more than what we had
created before.”