What is a carrousel watch?

　　Many people do not know what a carrousel watch means, so today let us take a look together.

　　Introduction to carrousel watches

　　The carrousel, meaning merry-go-round, was originally invented by Bahne Bonniksen (1859-1935), a Danish watchmaker based in London, in 1892 and patented (patent number: 21421). It is a rotating carriage structure. Bahne Bonniksen wanted to create a special escapement mechanism that, like the tourbillon, could counteract the effects of gravity while remaining more accessible in price, thus giving birth to the carrousel.

　　Unlike the drive structure of a tourbillon, the lower end of the rotating carriage in a carrousel extends into a hollow shaft, with a wheel connected to its lower face. This wheel meshes with a third pinion. The rotating carriage shaft passes through the bridge and is supported by it, with the opposing faces of the rotating carriage and the wheel acting as thrust surfaces. The fourth wheel arbor passes through the hollow shaft at the lower end of the rotating carriage; within the carriage, the fourth wheel meshes with the escapement pinion, while outside the carriage, the fourth pinion meshes with the third wheel, transmitting impulse from the third wheel to the escape wheel. The fourth pinion transfers motion to the escapement pinion via the fourth wheel. The balance staff is not concentric with the fourth pinion within the rotating carriage. Because the rotating carriage is not driven directly by the fourth wheel arbor, the rotational speed of the carriage is always lower than that of the fourth wheel arbor. Therefore, the carrousel gear train design is effectively a differential planetary gear system.

　　The difference between a carrousel and a tourbillon

　　1. A tourbillon typically rotates through one revolution faster than a carrousel.

　　2. The tourbillon balance wheel is normally concentric with its carriage, whereas the carrousel is eccentric, with very few concentric examples.

　　3. A tourbillon generally features a fixed wheel, with the escapement revolving around this fixed wheel; a carrousel lacks a fixed wheel, and every wheel undergoes orbital revolution.

　　Types of watch calendars

　　Common types include the single calendar (indicating the date only), double calendar (indicating both date and day of the week), triple calendar (indicating date, day, and month), and complex calendar (indicating date, day, month, and moon phases).