Audemars Piguet · Royal Oak “Jumbo” Extra-Thin · 16202ST

Royal Oak

Steel, 39 millimetres across, 8.1 thick. Drawn in one night in April 1970, shown in Basel on 15 April 1972, and still running.

Case

39 mm

Thickness

8.1 mm

Calibre

7121

Beat

4 Hz

Drag to turn it

02The octagon

Eight screws,
in plain sight.

Genta drew a monocoque case with its bezel pierced by eight visible screws and its water-resistance seal left on show. The hexagonal heads sit in the bezel so they cannot turn once they are locked from beneath.

The first screws were steel. Seawater corroded them, so from 1972 they were gold.

Point at a screw

03The finish

Satin,
then polish.

Every flat of the case and bracelet is satin-brushed in one direction; every edge between them is a polished bevel, finished by hand. Light runs along the satin in a soft band and snaps across the bevels in a line. That contrast is the whole Royal Oak.

Drag sideways to move the light

04The dial

Petite
Tapisserie.

Stern Frères cut the first dials: pattern T21, later named Petite Tapisserie, in Bleu Nuit, Nuage 50. We measured the pitch from Audemars Piguet’s own photograph: a pyramid every 0.95 mm, roughly eight hundred across the dial.

Move the light across the dial

05The mainspring

Wind it.

Each turn of the crown passes through the crown wheel to the ratchet on the barrel, and a click stops the spring from running back. Fully wound, Calibre 7121 runs for 52 hours.

06Le Brassus

A workshop
in the valley.

In 1875 Jules Louis Audemars and Edward Auguste Piguet, friends since childhood, opened a workshop in Le Brassus, in the Vallée de Joux. A few kilometres down the valley, in Le Sentier, LeCoultre would one day make the ébauche of the first Royal Oak’s calibre.

History: Audemars Piguet Heritage, “Birth of an Icon” (AP Chronicles, 2022). Map: OpenStreetMap contributors.

07The quartz year

Christmas Day,
1969.

Seiko unveiled the Astron, the world’s first quartz watch, on 25 December 1969. Swiss watches had held half the world market; within two decades Swiss watchmaking employed a third as many people. Audemars Piguet’s answer was not a cheaper watch. It was a steel one that cost more than gold.

Swiss watchmaking jobs. 1970: 90,000. 1988: 28,000. One line per thousand.

Figures: Wikipedia, “Quartz crisis”.

08One night

“A steel sports watch that has never been done before.”

Georges Golay, managing director

“I had to come up with all that in one night!”

Gérald Genta

History: Audemars Piguet Heritage, “Birth of an Icon” (AP Chronicles, 2022).

09Basel, 15 April 1972

Steel at the
price of gold.

Hugo Buchser’s advertising for the launch

It was presented at booth 545, Hall 1, as the most expensive steel watch in the world: CHF 3,300, against CHF 2,990 for Audemars Piguet’s own yellow gold Model 5043.

“I think we’re crazy. We will never sell steel watches at this price!”

Georges Golay

Made in 1972

565

The A-series, planned at 1,000

2,000

Model 5402, in all

6,050

History: Audemars Piguet Heritage, “Birth of an Icon” (AP Chronicles, 2022).

10Five houses

One watch,
five houses.

1. BraceletGay Frères, Geneva. 154 components.
2. CaseFavre-Perret, La Chaux-de-Fonds. Four prototypes ordered 16 June 1970; a thousand steel cases on 19 May 1971.
3. DialStern Frères, Roland Tille’s team. Pattern T21, Bleu Nuit, Nuage 50.
4. MovementCalibre 2121 on a LeCoultre ébauche: 3.05 mm, then the thinnest selfwinding movement with a central rotor and a date.
5. NameCarlo de Marchi. “Safari” and “Excalibur” were tried first; “Royal Oak” enters the archive on 2 December 1971.

History: Audemars Piguet Heritage, “Birth of an Icon” (AP Chronicles, 2022). Point at a maker to find their part.

11Fifty years

The first luxury
sports watch.

1. 1972Royal Oak, Model 5402, steel, 39 mm.
2. 1976A Royal Oak for women.
3. 1984The first perpetual calendar in the octagon.
4. 1993Royal Oak Offshore, by Emmanuel Gueit: 42 mm, nicknamed “the Beast”.
5. 2002Royal Oak Concept.
6. 2022Calibre 7121 and the 16202, for the fiftieth year.

Dates: Wikipedia, “Royal Oak (watch)”; Audemars Piguet.

09Calibre 7121

Fifty years on,
a new heart.

Calibre 7121 was made for the Royal Oak’s fiftieth year, in 2022, and replaced the 2121 that had run inside the Jumbo since 1972. Shake your hand and the rotor swings: that is what winds it on the wrist.

Parts

268

Jewels

33

Diameter

29.6mm

Height

3.2mm

Reserve

52h

10Four hertz

Eight beats
a second.

The balance swings four times a second each way. Every pass through its centre, the pallet fork lets the escape wheel forward by half a tooth, and the whole train steps behind it. We cut our train to the ratios a 4 Hz movement must have; Audemars Piguet does not publish the 7121’s teeth.

11Exploded

Thirty-three
jewels.

Synthetic rubies wherever a steel pivot turns and where the pallet meets the escape wheel: hard and smooth, so the steel running in them wears slowly. Watch them light, one by one.

122121 to 7121

Hear the
difference.

Calibre data: Audemars Piguet.

Exe.Eyes Labs

Hire Exe.Eyes.

One watch, built in code to the millimetre from its maker’s photographs and running at four hertz, in a browser. Imagine yours.

Audemars Piguet and Royal Oak are trademarks of Audemars Piguet. A concept by Exe.Eyes Labs. Not affiliated.

Colophon

Calibre set out to keep a mechanical watch running in a browser. Every surface of the case and bracelet carries its own satin or polished finish, the Petite Tapisserie is computed per pixel under a light you hold, and the escapement beats at a true four hertz with the whole train stepping behind it.

The history is drawn rather than photographed, and the last screen turns the bezel’s eight screws into the eight pieces of the Exe.Eyes mark.