Just announced is the new watch brand 2LMX with their first watch… the 2LMX. I think a model name will come later. The super cool mechanical timepiece is one of those things that helps me explain to people what I do when they ask “how is it that you write at least once a day on watches?” Because cool stuff like this keeps coming out. The watch is the brainchild of Arnaud Tellier. He is the former head of the Geneva Patek Philippe museum.
Interesting that he and his pals went futuristic after he resided over classic and vintage pieces for so long. The 2LMX watch reminds me of the Cabestan Winch Tourbillon Vertical watch (a lot). These watches share concepts including the overall design. They both have vertically mounted tourbillons, they both have split dials, and they both have highly exposed cases and movements. More than a little bit of credit goes to Jean-Francois Ruchonnet for this design.
The 2LMX movement uses four drums (two of them have drums within the drums) to indicate time digitally. The system is incredibly neat to see in action. You can see a video on their site here. The drums within drums concept allows them to indicate 10 digits in a limited space. Plus, the watch only tells them time in a 24 hour format.
Looking down at the watch you can see the movement gears and tourbillon moving all the time. Really a good piece for gear-heads. The movement is manually wound with a power reserve of 120 hours (pretty good). It also has a slick constant force system needed for changing the drums around without losing amplitude. I really love the look of the movement – which you can thankfully see though the various sapphire crystal windows.
2LMX’s watch case is 41mm wide by about 50mm tall. 2LMX will produce the watch in titanium, platinum, white gold, and pink gold. They will also make custom watches for you – but then again the base models are going to cost a fortune as well. The strap is either black or white rubber as well a other options such as alligator or leather. Super cool, expensive (not sure yet), and available in 2012.