Not all images were able to load for printing. Please close the print window and try again. What Armin Strom has Achieved in 15 years… Resonance!
In 15 years, the duo behind Armin Strom has managed to impress and to master the resonance concept like no other.
Fifteen years of Armin Strom… witnessing how far they have come in one-and-a-half decade is more than impressive. Claude Greisler and Serge Michel took over the watch business from Mr. Armin Strom, who had made a name for himself as a specialist in hand-skeletonizing. Claude and Serge had a different ambition: to put their own movements in their own watches. And they have done exactly that in a pretty spectacular way, up to the point of mastering a concept that few even thought about tackling: resonance!
When Claude and Serge took over Mr. Strom’s company, the world of watches was quite different from what it looks like today. Nowadays, triple-axis tourbillons are more commonplace than any complication used to be. Let’s face it, there’s a reason why some watchmaking companies are called the holy trinity: that’s where the most beautiful complications were made and innovation thrived. However, today, complications and innovation can also be found in small independent brands like Armin Strom. And to make things even more interesting, this is where some of the most complex puzzles of the watchmaking world are solved!
One of these complex puzzles is resonance. Let me quote our managing editor, Brice Goulard: “Resonance has been a field of research for many watchmakers in the past, but also in recent years. F.P. Journe came up with his own solution, with two fully independent movements in a single watch, positioning the two balances next to one another to benefit from the theoretical effect of resonance. Yet, if the idea was great on paper, something was missing in this equation to make full use of the resonance effect. This is where Armin Strom enters the race.” For their 15th anniversary, Greisler and Michel managed to reduce the size of the movement significantly, resulting in a 39mm x 9mm watch that comprises one of the most complex constructions to achieve chronometry, a watch named the Dual Time GMT Resonance First Edition. If you want a full explanation of what resonance is and how Armin Strom tackled this, it was penned down by our own Xavier Markl in this article. Also, if you really want to go into the fine details, you can read one of our geekiest stories here: Resonance, Christiaan Huygens, and the Longitude Problem.
Besides this more-than-impressive achievement, the growth of the company has been spectacular. Armin Strom has created eighteen in-house movements that are developed, manufactured, finished and assembled in-house. A staggering 97% of the movement is literally made in-house, and yes, that’s pretty rare.
I hope you will enjoy watching the video that we filmed during our most recent visit to Armin Strom in Biel, Switzerland. For more details, please visit ArminStrom.com.
