Do you know the origins of the carrousel?

　　As a watch enthusiast, you are sure to have heard of the term carrousel; if not, do not worry. Also known as the merry-go-round, the carrousel was invented by a Danish watchmaker. If you would like to know the origins of the carrousel, follow Xiao Ya below to find out more about this mysterious mechanism.

　　What is a carrousel?

　　The carrousel, meaning merry-go-round, was originally invented and patented in 1892 by Bahne Bonniksen, a Danish watchmaker based in London. It is a rotating framework structure. Thus was born the carrousel, a special escapement that, like the tourbillon, counters gravity while remaining more accessible in price.

　　The origins of the carrousel

　　In 1801, during the heyday of pocket watches, the tourbillon regulation device was created to combat the significant impact of gravity on the balance spring and escapement within the movement. However, due to its complexity and high cost, the tourbillon did not become widespread. In the less than two centuries from its invention up to 1986, fewer than 1000 tourbillon timepieces were made.

　　At the end of the nineteenth century, Bahne Bonniksen, a Danish watchmaker living in Britain, simplified the rotating escapement and patented it in order to create a more cost-effective, simpler in structure, and more accurate escapement device. He named it the carrousel (meaning merry-go-round). However, because its manufacturing process was more complex and involved a greater variety of components, its price actually increased rather than decreased. Despite this, the carrousel enjoyed immense popularity over the following decade or so. According to records, at the timepieces competition held at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in 1904, among the 50 competing watches, 38 were carrousel timepieces. Unfortunately, the manufacture and development of carrousel watches was concentrated in Britain, and as the British watchmaking industry did not experience substantial growth in later years, the production of carrousel watches gradually died out.

　　Similarities and differences between the carrousel and the tourbillon

　　The purpose of both the tourbillon and the carrousel is to offset the effect of gravity on the timekeeping accuracy of a watch when its vertical position changes. Objectively speaking, the fundamental difference between these two systems lies in their transmission routes.

　　The core concept of the tourbillon is that the escapement revolves periodically at a constant speed of 360 degrees around the axis of the tourbillon cage (the industry-standard ideal speed being one rotation per minute), so that positional errors caused by gravity on the components cancel each other out. Therefore, in the classical concept, a tourbillon is a rotating framework containing the balance wheel and escapement, with the balance wheel usually positioned centrally. The fourth wheel beneath the balance wheel is fixed and concentric with the axis of the carriage platform, while the teeth of the escape wheel mesh with the fourth wheel, revolving around it at an ideal speed of one revolution per minute.

　　The initial design intent of the carrousel was identical to that of the tourbillon, and its basic principle also mounts the escapement and balance wheel on a carriage platform that rotates around an axis. The difference is that a tourbillon uses a fixed gear, deriving power for the balance wheel and escapement from the rotation of the cage. A carrousel, by contrast, does not use a fixed gear; it features two independent yet complementary gear trains, both driven by the third wheel. Within this dual-gear transmission chain, one controls the rotation of the framework, while the other transmits power to run the escapement system.

　　By comparison, the carrousel design is more complex and requires more components during manufacture. Consequently, it delivers stronger power transmission and suffers less amplitude loss when energy weakens, thereby achieving a more stable rate.

　　That covers all details regarding the origins of the carrousel. The carrousel can be described as a significant invention in watchmaking history, and as a watch enthusiast, it is something you should definitely understand.

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