Every moment in which our eyes open, in which colour meets form, in which every object we touch acquires solidity and the universe whispers “I am here”, we are in fact under the rule of a single absolute law: the electromagnetic force. Escaping from that dark refuge of the nucleus and spilling outward, holding electrons in their orbits, binding atoms into molecules, giving fire its colour and water its fluidity, this power is the one real director visible on the great stage of the cosmos.
If gravity is a silent bond wrapped around the galaxies and the nuclear forces are the hidden iron fist of the nucleus, then electromagnetism is the symphonic circle of the universe, its light and its chemistry. This immense manifestation of creation has given the palace of existence both order and beauty, through particles pushing and pulling at one another.
format_quote"Electromagnetism is the symphonic circle of the universe, its light and its chemistry."
Hasan Bekmezci
In the middle of the nineteenth century humanity still took electricity and magnetism for two separate curiosities of nature. One of the first to sense the hidden bond between a current passing through a wire and the swing of a compass needle was the experimentalist Michael Faraday, who could fairly be called a genius. Though he did not know the mathematics, Faraday felt nature with his fingertips and, with his notion of lines of force, declared that space is woven with invisible webs.
But the genius who turned that intuition into an immortal universal law was the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Sitting down at his desk, Maxwell was weighing an enormous question in his mind: are the electric current and the magnetic field two faces of the same coin? And, more importantly still, is what we call light in fact an electromagnetic oscillation with a wavelength?
Using the clear mathematical symmetry in his mind, Maxwell wrote four tremendous equations. They set out with flawless coherence how an electric field triggers a magnetic field and a magnetic field an electric one. The moment he solved them and saw that the speed of the resulting wave matched the speed of light exactly was one of the great moments of awe in the history of physics. Maxwell had sealed, in the language of equations, the fact that the cosmos runs not on matter alone but on pure light and on electromagnetic waves.
format_quote"Maxwell had sealed, in the language of equations, the fact that the cosmos runs not on matter alone but on pure light and on electromagnetic waves."
Hasan Bekmezci
The constants that set the strength of the electromagnetic force and the interaction between an electron and a proton, that is the fine-structure constant of about one part in a hundred and thirty-seven, are the key settings that built the chemistry laboratory of the universe. Had the strength of this force been created even a hair differently, the palace of existence would have collapsed as follows.
What would have happened if the electromagnetic force had been a little stronger? Why would the electrons have crashed into the nucleus? The attraction between the positive charge of the nucleus and the negative charge of the electron would have grown so violent that electrons could not have stayed in orbit; they would have spiralled in and stuck to the heart of the nucleus. Why would chemistry have ended before it began? Atoms could not have shared electrons, and molecules, which is to say water, proteins and DNA, could not have been built. Solid matter could not have existed, and the universe would have stayed in a blind darkness stripped of chemical bonds.
What would have happened if the electromagnetic force had been a little weaker? Why would atoms have fallen apart? The bond between the nucleus and the electrons would have been so weak that the smallest tremor of heat would have flung the electrons away from the nucleus. Why would life have been impossible? Atoms could not have held on, substances could not have stayed together, and the universe would have remained a ghostly soup of particles, neither solid nor liquid nor gas, in which no bond could be made.
Let us use these five analogies to make that invisible power concrete in the mind. The invisible spider web: it is like threads wrapping every corner of the universe and seen by no eye, and particles signal one another, touch and bind across that web. The violin string and resonance: just as striking one of two violin strings sets the other trembling at the same frequency, electromagnetism builds an invisible bridge of frequency and resonance between the substances of the universe.
The magnet and the iron filings: just as a magnet placed under a sheet of paper instantly arranges the filings above it into a flawless geometric pattern, electromagnetism is a divine ruler that puts chaotic matter into ordered forms. Sunlight and the spring of life: that very sunlight we see with our eyes, which warms our bodies and gives life to plants, is the electromagnetic wave itself, the pure energy running in the veins of the universe.
And the meshing of watch wheels: that mechanical tension in which wheels push and pull at one another and let time flow is, at the macroscopic scale, an exact copy of the electromagnetic balance in which electrons push and pull at one another and hold matter up.
The contemporary masterpiece of independent watchmaking that carries the flawless equilibrium the cosmos builds with electromagnetic waves onto the wrist, in the resonance of a double balance floating in air, is the MB&F Legacy Machine N°2. Twin flying balance wheels and a differential, a domed sapphire crystal and bridges of the highest order, handmade finishing and two independent escapements: all of it gathered onto a single stage.
With a boldness rarely seen in the history of watchmaking, the Legacy Machine N°2 places two independent balance wheels at the very centre of the dial, facing one another beneath arched bridges suspended in the air. Each is eleven millimetres across and carries four traditional regulating screws; each swings at its own natural rate on its own escapement, and the two are exact mirror images of each other, right down to the direction of the stud holders pinning their balance springs. Although the two wheels do not look directly connected to one another, the planetary differential at six takes the average of the two oscillations and produces a single flawless flow of time. Made of three gears and five pinions, that differential is not hidden at all; on the contrary it is raised above the surface of the dial on a double-arc, mirror-polished bridge. This architecture lays bare the flawless resonance of two separate energies, exactly as electromagnetic fields build equilibrium in the universe by acting on one another.
format_quote"This architecture lays bare the flawless resonance of two separate energies, exactly as electromagnetic fields build equilibrium in the universe by acting on one another."
Hasan Bekmezci
The enormous, high-domed sapphire crystal that covers the watch creates optical refractions and displays the mechanism inside it almost like a space station or a laboratory cupola. Light filtering through that glass and falling on the wheels makes concrete on the wrist that mesmerising game electromagnetic waves play in the optical world. The forty-four millimetre case stands twenty millimetres high in platinum, red gold and white gold, and nineteen in the later titanium and palladium editions.
The hand-filed concave bevels on the angled edges of the bridges, the Geneva-striped bridge surfaces and the polished screws amount to the final manifesto that Max Büsser and a circle of independent talents have written to electromagnetic perfection in the language of watchmaking. The engine was developed exclusively for MB&F by Jean-François Mojon at Chronode together with Kari Voutilainen; it winds on a single barrel, carries two hundred and forty-one components and forty-four jewels, and runs for forty-five hours. MB&F names its own ancestors too: Breguet, Ferdinand Berthoud and Antide Janvier, the three men who put two regulators into one movement.
One of them is the electromagnetic force constant of the cosmos, which holds matter up and brings colour, light and chemistry into being; the other is the MB&F Legacy Machine N°2, which brings the resonance of two independent oscillations to the wrist in pure optics and mechanics.
One is the visible elegance of the universe; the other is the mechanical echo of that elegance upon a set of wheels.
The watch in its maker’s own words: MB&F, Legacy Machine N°2