Thinking outside the box key to the creation of this masterpiece, which the brand claims is one of the world's most complicated
At last year's BaselWorld Maurice Lacroix teased a handful of privileged visitors with snippets of information for its Memoire 1 watch, which it claimed to be the first mechanical watch with a memory.
Information on the new timepiece was released periodically last year, but the watch was officially launched to great fanfare this year.
The question posed by Maurice Lacroix in devising this timepiece was, can a mechanism remember? And, according to the watchmaker, the answer is yes. The memory function was developed by Maurice Lacroix for a mechanical watch, and this grand complication will appear initially in the Memoire 1 Chronograph.
The watch marks a milestone in watchmaking for relying on two hands (one for the minutes, one for the seconds) and a disc to display the hour, minute and seconds functions as well as using the hands and disc to act as the chronograph. By pressing a button on the crown, the 'time' and 'chrono' modes change their positions. When the chronograph function is running, the user is still able to shift between modes without losing any of the information provided by either function. The modes are revealed in an indication with a hand at 3o'clock.
Damien Sourice, head atelier at the watchmaker's Atelier de Maurice Lacroix, said: 'Our idea was to find an ideal solution whereby we could obtain the display of chronograph and a watch with three hands. Hence the idea to combine the chronograph function with the time function.'
