TAG Heuer Mikrogirder: The Inside Story

Concept watches- like concept cars- can take one of two forms: either an outlandish styling exercise to win a few headlines, or a genuine preview of where a brand is headed. The TAG Heuer Mikrogirder, announced last week in Geneva, is definitely the latter. In fact, perhaps the least interesting part of the Mikrogirder story is the headline number of 5/ 10,000ths of a second. It’s easy to be blase about such a stunning achievement, but if TAG Heuer had simply reached this milestone by developing a  faster evolution of the Mikrotimer (1/ 1,000ths second), then the story would not be as significant.
No, the real story of the Mikrogirder is the development of a new system for regulating mechanical watches and the beginnings of a push to change the way that Swiss watches are certified.
To get the inside word on the Mikrogirder, Calibre 11 spoke with TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Christophe Babin, technical guru Guy Semon (Vice President of Sciences and Engineering at TAG Heuer) and lead designer Christoph Behling. The Mikrogirder is the third ultra-high frequency watch in 12 months and is certainly the most interesting.