François-Paul Journe, Founder of Montres Journe, Geneva, Switzerland
Osama Sendi, Founder of TheJourneGuy.com, Toronto, Canada
Pierre Halimi, General Manager of Montres Journe North America (translation)
March 2, 2020
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A full house was eagerly awaiting the start of the March lecture at the Horological Society of New York. François-Paul Journe, Founder of Montres Journe, along with Osama Sendi, Founder of TheJourneGuy.com, presented their topic on the phenomenon of resonance: what it is, its history and its application in horology.
Sendi started the lecture with the three key terms that are necessary to understand the concept of resonance: amplitude, frequency and natural frequency. A wine glass being shattered by a human voice, for instance, is a common example of natural frequency. The history began with Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695), the Dutch scientist who invented the pendulum clock in 1656 and first observed the occurrence of resonance. However, the first application goes to Antide Janvier (1751-1835) the royal clockmaker to Louis XVIII who created three clocks: Double Pendulum Long Case Clock No. 400, Double Pendulum Wall regulator No. 453 and the Coupling Regulator No. 470. Then, Abraham-Louis Breguet (1741-1823) tested the phenomenon in clocks: Breguet No.3177, Breguet No. 3671 and then pocket watches: Breguet Nos. 2788, 2794 and 2667.
Finally, Sendi introduced François-Paul Journe to the podium along with Pierre Halimi, General Manager of Montres Journe North America, who assisted as Journe’s translator. Journe touched upon his life, experience and apprenticeship, and explained the connection with the pendulum and resonance which was exemplified by the Breguet No. 3177 Clock. He continued to explain his creation of movements that resulted in the 1998 debut of his resonance wristwatch. Incidentally, the engraved word "resonance" on his debut piece was misspelled with a double n: "resonnance". In 2000, he created the F.P.Journe Chronometre a Resonance. Journe stated that the timepiece had to have no variation, it needed to be impeccable — the settings had to be precise. That type of drive is not surprising from a watchmaker, let alone a legendary watchmaker. Journe strongly believes that one can always get a step closer to perfection.
HSNY thanks François-Paul Journe, Osama Sendi and Pierre Halimi for their fascinating lecture!
Photography by Atom Moore
Submitted by Melody Benloss, Recording Secretary & Associate Librarian