Talking With Jean-François Mojon on the Role of Technology in Watchmaking
In watchmaking, modern technology can be a nuanced topic. Tech is often perceived as an antagonistic force against “handmade watchmaking.” For many watch collectors, there’s no higher ideal than “handmade.” Most of modern technology in manufacturing connotes industrialization – a term that rarely creates warm and fuzzy feelings in the realm of art and craftsmanship.
This said, the watch industry has come to embrace modern technology on nearly every level. It’s not only CNC machining, but also in how timepieces are designed with computer-aided design (CAD) systems and the abundance of material science innovations applied to everything from cases to hairsprings. Mechanical watchmaking is firmly planted in the 21st century, even when it continues to find tons of inspiration in history.
We spoke recently with Jean-François Mojon to understand the changing role of technology in watchmaking. Often behind the scenes in the industry, Mojon founded a complication development workshop, CHRONODE SA, in 2005 and has worked on innovative timepieces from MB&F’s Legacy Machine 1 to Cyrus Geneve’s Vertical Tourbillon Skeleton to the first application of a detent escapement in a wristwatch with Urban Jürgensen.
The tool is only as good as the hands that wield it
At the forefront of many of the industry’s most creative watchmaking projects, one of Mojon’s major takeaways from the changing role of technology is simple – it’s a tool and the effectiveness of every tool depends on who uses it.
This is where watchmaking experience, the people in the industry, remains extremely important today. It’s not that technology, specifically in the case of CAD systems, devalues experience. Rather, CAD systems enable creative watchmakers like Mojon to bring their ideas into reality much faster without sacrificing quality. “How we explore ideas in watchmaking is what has changed the most with modern technologies like computer-assisted design software,” Mojon mentioned when we spoke. “Especially for complicated timepieces, we can design and simulate different solutions to technical challenges much faster, much better than before.”
This is a major part of driving the recent (past 20 years) arrival of ultra-complicated timepieces, and a long list of “firsts” in watchmaking. Whether it’s the first triple-axis tourbillon (Thomas Prescher in 2004) or first silicon hairspring (Ulysse Nardin Freak in 2001) or extremely high-frequency (50Hz) movements (Zenith Primero 21 in 2017), all of these innovations are a function of better design, virtual simulation, prototyping, and manufacturing tools in the hands of the experienced craftspeople in watchmaking.
Tech bridges gaps in the industry
We’re always trying to understand the differences between the watch industry of yesteryear compared to how things stand now. Mojon is acutely aware of these differences – both in his own experiences since entering the industry in the early 1990s and from his grasp on general watchmaking history. “Before the Quartz Crisis, there were big companies dedicated to the development and production of movements for nearly every brand (Ebauches SA, Valjoux, Zenith, etc.). They possessed so much experience and knowledge, and saw all of the most specific technical issues that existed in the process. After the 1980s, those businesses lost many of their craftspeople and brands slowly shifted toward manufacturing movements in-house.”
Where does technology come into play here with this dramatic shift in the industry? It helps bridge the gap between those specialized manufactures of the 1960s and the requirement to create movements from much newer, smaller businesses today. CAD systems, once again taken as an example here, lower the barrier of entry for watchmakers that may not have “seen it all” in a movement manufacture. Watchmakers can virtually simulate the kinematics of new designs, gaining an understanding of how things play together without manufacturing, assembling, disassembling, and re-assembling a timepiece with every small, iterative change.
A driving force in accelerating the rate at which movements are developed, even the most complicated, Mojon estimated that “the entire process of developing a new caliber is probably around four or five times faster with CAD than it was before when everything was designed by hand with drawings and required more cycles of prototyping.”
Even with modern tech, the last mile remains the same
Even with all of the technological advancement in watchmaking, some things stay the same. “With most technology used to develop new movements, it all helps in the first 80-90% of the process, but the last 10% remains the same,” Mojon said. With all of the CAD-based simulations, every component must still be manufactured and assembled. The watch must be wound and worn to evaluate its performance. When we discussed the development of the Moritz Grossmann Cal. 106.0, they experienced a similar reality – sometimes when things work in a computer simulation, it doesn’t mean they will work in reality. The last mile with all of its final refinements looks very similar to the last mile in watchmaking from other centuries.
When rounding out the conversation with Mojon, it’s clear that modern technologies and their involvement in watchmaking all serve a single purpose – to create more exciting, innovative movements. There’s nothing higher to serve than the creation of a new caliber that performs well, remains durable over time. This is the pragmatic approach to thinking about the role of technology in the watch industry. There’s really no philosophical enquiry into the good and evil of such tools – it’s simply a question of whether a watchmaker with these tools is pushing the craft past the known horizon.