原帖由 qjjin.fscneu 于 2008-8-21 21:11 发表 http://www.iwatch365.com/images/common/back.gif
Chopard L.U.C. 1.96图片欣赏及价位
The Chopard Manufacture at Fleurier 10th Anniversary and Chrono One Premierby Edward Hahn
September 25, 2006
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"Why is Chopard successful? The family is a perfect team -
a dream team. This is why they can go so far."
-- Jacky Ickx, Formula 1 driver and 6-time winner at Le Mans
After a welcome by Karl-Friedrich Scheufele to the crowd of international press invited to attend the 10th Anniversary of the Chopard Manufacture, these words by the long-time Scheufele family friend opened a night and a day of celebration and facility tours, capped by the introduction of a watch and movement of historic stature.
Background / The Scheufele FamilyChopard was founded in 1860 by Louis-Ulysse Chopard, in Sonvilier in the Jura Mountains of western Switzerland, and specialized in gold pocket watches. Control of the company stayed with the Chopard family, first through Louis-Ulysses son Paul, and then his grandsons. In 1963, Paul-André - the grandson of Louis-Ulysse - by then over 80 years old with no watchmaking heir, sold the Chopard company to young Karl Scheufele III. The new owner was the third-generation head of Karl Scheufele GmbH, a jewelry watch manufacturer in Pforzheim, Germany. Karl and his wife Karin then undertook the integration of the near-moribund Chopard watchmaking operation with their Pforzheim business, and began building up Chopard as a haute-jewelry and watch brand. Chopard remains an 100% family-owned company today.
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Karl and Karin Scheufele
While Karl as chairman and Karin still perform some day-to-day operations at Chopard, his son and daughter have stepped up to actively run the company in the positions of co-presidents/CEOs. Son Karl-Friedrich oversees the development and production of watches and movements, and daughter Caroline oversees the design of watches and jewelry. The rest of the family also is active in the watch and jewelry industry: Carolines Italian husband Fawaz Gruosi has a background that includes Harry Winston and Bulgari, and is the founder of de Grisogono. Even Karl-Friedrichs wife Christine helps promote the brand, along with other duties such as co-driving as a husband-wife team at the Chopard-sponsored Mille Miglia auto rally through northern Italy.
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The L.U.C 1860 and Caliber 1.96 (Photo Courtesy Chopard)
To say that Chopard has accomplished a lot in their first 10 years after establishing themselves as a full-fledged manufacture is understating the case. Their first manufacture movement, the L.U.C 1.96 (L.U.C for Chopard founder Louis-Ulysse Chopard), made a big splash in the high-end watchmaking world, combining a unique microrotor autowinding movement with a chronometer-quality escapement. This watch captured the imagination of the WIS community, with Timezones Walt Odets calling it "...among the finest - if not simply the finest automatic caliber currently manufactured in Switzerland..." The rest of the watch world agreed, and Chopard won the 1997 Watch of the Year in Switzerland.
While the effort to build the first movement was undertaken starting in 1994 with the cooperation of the Michel Parmigiani manufacture also in Fleurier, Chopard quickly built their skills and capabilities and was a 100% independent manufacture by 1995. As of September 2006, Chopard employs 108 people at Fleurier, including research and development engineers, industrial process engineers, watchmakers, and other highly technical professions.
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The L.U.C Quattro / Caliber 1.98 (Photo Courtesy Chopard)
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The L.U.C Tonneau / Caliber 3.97 (Photo Courtesy Chopard)
Highlights of the last ten years of L.U.C watch production include their first manufacture watch, the L.U.C. 1860, containing the aforementioned 1.96 caliber. The next major accomplishment was the release in 2000 of the L.U.C. Quattro, the first four-barrel wristwatch (caliber 1.98), with a 9 day/216 hour power reserve. The L.U.C Tonneau was introduced in 2001 as the first self-winding movement with shaped movement, containing the 3.97 caliber.
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The L.U.C Tourbillon / Caliber 1.02 (Photo Courtesy Chopard)
Chopard joined the ranks of companies that have produced manufacture movement tourbillons in 2003, with the L.U.C Quattro Tourbillon. This movement has the Quattro lines trademark 9 day power reserve, using a 4-barrel caliber 1.02 movement.
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The L.U.C Qualité Fleurier (Photo Courtesy Chopard)
In 2004, Chopard released the L.U.C Qualité Fleurier, a special edition that was the first Chopard watch to receive the new Fondation Qualité Fleurier (FQF) rating, containing a special variant of the 1.96 known as the 9.96. The FQF is a watch rating body established in 2001 to ensure the quality and aesthetics of watches and movements of haute horologerie. Chopard is a founding member of the FQF. Unlike the Geneva Seal which is limited to watches produced in the canton of Geneva, the FQF rating is open to all Swiss watch makers.
The tests for the rating include: (1) COSC Certification; (2) the "Chronofiable" test, which checks the watches ability to withstand aging - repeated actuation of the crown, pushers, and rotating bezels (as equipped) - and resistance to magnetism, shock, and water; (3) Aesthetic standards - including materials (limited to traditional metals and ceramics; no plastics allowed), functional and aesthetic finishing, methods of parts manufacturing (no mass production methods such as stamping allowed), and appropriate plating of movements; and (4) the Fleuriertest, a repeatable 24 hour test simulating wearing by the end purchaser, including computerized image analysis - the watch must run between 0 and +5 seconds per day. Additional information on the Fondation Qualité Fleurier can be found at http://www.fqf.ch/ (an English version of the site can be accessed through a link at the bottom left).
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The L.U.C Strike One - a chiming wristwatch (Photo Courtesy Chopard)
New this year (2006) is the L.U.C Strike One, a wristwatch that has a selectable audible chime on the hour, containing the caliber 96 SH.
Other noteworthy timepieces from the ten year history of the Fleurier manufacture include:
[*]The L.U.C GMT containing a GMT function (caliber 4.96 GMT, 2002) [*]The L.U.C Pro One, a divers watch with "high-tech" movement finishing (caliber 4.96 Pro One, 2002) [*]The L.U.C Quattro Regulator, a watch with regulator-style time presentation and second timezone (caliber 1.98-37089, 2004) [*]The L.U.C Twist, a watch with the Geneva Seal that has an offset dial with small seconds at 7 (caliber 1.96, 2005) [*]The L.U.C Lunar One, the first perpetual calendar in the L.U.C line, with a large date display and moonphase (caliber 1.96 QP, 2005). The Celebrationfile:///D:/新建文件夹/CHOPARD萧邦的传奇/Chopard%20Chrono%20One.files/LausannePalace.jpg' />
The Lausanne Palace Hotel
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Venue for the Celebration
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Karl-Friedrich Scheufele
Gathered at the five-star Lausanne Palace hotel on Tuesday 12 September 2006 was a crowd of international press and special invited guests, including long-time friend Jacky Ickx and his beautiful wife, and Tom Kristensen (7 time winner of Le Mans). Fabulous food and entertainment was had, from a very talented jazz singer-pianist, to two clever magicians who were experts at closeup magic, to a saxophone quartet made up of young ladies in black L.U.C. 10th Anniversary T-shirts. At the US table was our host for the trip, Stephanie Labeille of Chopard USA, who was a very gracious and personable host.
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(L to R): Jacky Ickx and his wife, Christine Scheufele, Tom Kristensen, and Caroline Scheufele
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Caroline Scheufele and Stephanie Labeille
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The L.U.C Manufacture 10th Anniversary Saxophone Quartet
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After an evening of food, wine, and music, we retired for the evening, anticipating an early start to get from Lausanne to Fleurier.
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A View of Fleurier (Photo Courtesy Chopard)
Our trip to Fleurier began with the assembled press and guests piling into what seemed to be an endless series of black VW vans. While starting out on the motorway to the north and west of Lausanne, we soon turned off onto a secondary road at Yverdon les Bains at the southern end of Lake Neuchatel, and began to climb back-and-forth in a series of switchbacks at the first ridge of the Jura mountains.
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A Chateau Overlooking Fleurier
Soon after reaching a plateau of sorts, we arrived at the charming village of Fleurier, home to Michel Parmigiani and Bovet in addition to the Chopard Manufacture.
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The Chopard Manufacture (Photo Courtesy Chopard)
The Chopard Manufacture occupies a building on the Rue des Moulins, originally built in 1903 and expanded several times, and tenanted in the past by Fabrique dEbauches de Fleurier (FEF), one of the many companies that in the past supplied movement blanks to the Swiss watch industry under the auspices of Ebauches SA (now ETA). The interior, however, has been completely renovated, and has state of the art ventilation and lighting. There will be a separate article describing our tour of this facility.
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In addition, Chopard has acquired a second building in Fleurier at 1 Rue du Temple, and renovated it with plans to move the R&D team here. We entered the grounds of this building, where the first floor of a workshop had been turned into a grand display announcing the L.U.C. Chrono One containing the in-house automatic chronograph movement L.U.C 10 CF.
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Computer Animation of the L.U.C 10CF Chronograph Works
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(Photo Courtesy Chopard)
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As is well known by now, the number of automatic chronograph movements that have been developed and produced can be counted without danger of running out of fingers and toes. Any automatic chronograph by Chopard would have been noteworthy - but what a movement theyve produced! Not content to produce an inexpensive or easy to mass-produce movement, Chopard has designed the movement without cutting any corners. This movement features:
[*]Chopards new "Variner" free-sprung balance with variable inertia weights - joining Patek Philippes Gyromax and Rolexs Microstella as the state of the art in balance regulation [*]Column wheel control - the traditionally favored control mechanism [*]Vertical clutch coupling to the timekeeping train - prevents chronograph second hand jump, and evens out the torque losses between running and stopped chronograph states [*]A newly patented planetary-geared bi-directional winding system - this uses unique gear profiling to cause a pinion to lock when rotated in one direction yet turn freely in the opposite direction. Rather than use a flat click wheel springs which are a common point of lubrication failure in many automatic winding trains, this uses robust gear wheels and pinions. [*]Retour en Vol (Flyback) - another favorite feature of enthusiasts, allowing the chronograph to be stopped, reset, and restarted with a single pusher press. [*]A unique zero-reset feature for the continuous small seconds - which changes the function of the reset chronograph pusher when the crown is in the timesetting position, to move the small second hand to the zero point. When the crown is not in the timesetting position, the mechanism is disengaged completely. file:///D:/新建文件夹/CHOPARD萧邦的传奇/Chopard%20Chrono%20One.files/LUC10CF-3.jpg' />
Dial Side of the L.U.C 10 CF (Photo Courtesy Chopard)
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(Photo Courtesy Chopard)
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(Photo Courtesy Chopard)
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(Photo Courtesy Chopard)
Following the introduction, we convened for a luncheon under tents outside the building. We were first given a welcome by Raoul Jeanneret, the president of the communal council of Fleurier, followed by a second welcome by Bernard Soguel - Minister of Finance for the Canton of Neuchâtel.
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Last to speak was Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, who thanked the press and noted the presence of an additional guest, operatic tenor Jose Carreras. He then recapped what Chopard has been able to accomplish in Fleurier in the ten years since the Manufacture was opened:
[*]Development of 5 basic mechanical calibers - the automatic L.U.C 1.96, the quad-barrel L.U.C 1.98, the automatic shaped caliber L.U.C 3.97, the tourbillon L.U.C 1.02, and the chronograph L.U.C 10 CF - with many subvariants. [*]Employment of over 100 personnel from a start of 3 in 1996 [*]Growth of production to 3000 movements (all COSC certified) and 25,000 watches per year [*]Establishment of a museum - the "L.U.CEUM" - containing many noteworthy historical pieces by several watchmakers With that, the festivities were brought to a close.
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Tom Kristensen and Jacky Ickx
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