Albert Gustave Piguet is the legendary technical director of Lemania (1948–1980) and the creator of the world's most famous chronograph calibre, the Lemania Calibre 2310.

But when Piguet was just a student at the Vallée de Joux School of Watchmaking, he created one of the most important watches of all time. As his graduation project under the tutelage of headmaster Marcel Vuilleumier, he created the Double Balance Chronometer.

The 1933 Pocket Watch

A Graduation Project That Changed Horology

This was a stunning example of classic Vallée de Joux watchmaking but with two massive split bi-metallic balance wheels with their results averaged by a differential.

There were a total of six of these pocket watches made from 1933 to 1934 with movements 38, 43 and 48mm in diameter.

A Colossal Achievement

The World's First of Its Kind

Prior to Albert-Gustave Piguet's 1933 creation, every known watch or clock featuring two oscillators operated on the principle of resonance. Piguet's innovation marked a radical departure, the very first timepiece to mechanically couple two oscillators in a completely new way, establishing a bold and new approach in horology.

The perfect geometric harmony of this movement with the center of each balance and that of the barrel forming a perfect triangle coupled with the rich finishing created a visual and technical masterpiece.

Accentuating this was the arrangement of the gear train in a dramatic straight vertical line from the barrel to the two stacked fourth wheels. Piguet's idea of placing both seconds wheels and the differential on top of each other created both elegance and also a small seconds indicator driven by the differential mechanism.

In a watch with a single balance, any disturbance to the oscillator is reflected directly in the rate. In a double-balance watch with a differential, a disturbance affecting one balance more than the other can be partially averaged out by the second oscillator.

1933

Albert-Gustave Piguet creates the Double Balance Chronometer as his graduation project at the Vallée de Joux School of Watchmaking.

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1948–1980

Piguet serves as technical director of Lemania, creating the Lemania Calibre 2310.

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2026

Legare presents the Chapter I AGP Inverted - Tribute to Albert-Gustave Piguet.

"What if Albert Gustave Piguet didn't join Lemania but instead, decided to create a brand of his own based on his revolutionary double balance wheel differential pocket watch?"