The History of Anti-Magnetic Watches

Science and horology have a long and storied history together, and within that lies the compelling history of anti-magnetic watches, a prime example of horological innovation driven by scientific understanding. There are hundreds if not thousands of watchmaking advances that are only possible due to engineers and scientists, concepts that might not originally have horology in mind – everything from friction to resonance – but that have nonetheless moulded how modern watches are made.

But that’s all a bit passive for us. That could apply to any industry like cars, smartphones, construction. What about when it’s the other way around? Timekeeping is intrinsic to many fields of scientific discovery, so what happens when science calls and watchmaking answers? To get there, we need to look at the most famous example of the ‘science watch’, the Rolex Milgauss and its relationship to Geneva’s CERN installation. But first, we need to talk about magnets.

Magnets are cool, right? Get one powerful enough and you can make a frog levitate, if that’s what you’re into. But even weak magnetic forces can have an impact on delicate machinery like that in your watch. In the early days of timekeeping, when weather changes at sea were the biggest issue, marine chronometers didn’t need to factor magnetic fields in. But as electricity took over particularly when it came to advancements like the railroad timekeeping started to become an issue. What happens is that, when parts of your watch get magnetised, they begin to stick together.

This is most noticeable in the delicate balance spring, which begins to coil and uncoil more erratically and pick up time, but it can happen to other parts too. These days you can just hold it up to an old CRT TV and hit ‘degauss’ (or get yourself a handy degausser often used in high-end audio), but in the early days that wasn’t an option. Watchmakers had known about the issues with magnetism for decades and indeed Vacheron Constantin spent tens of years developing the first anti-magnetic pocket watch that dropped in 1915. For wristwatches though, the premier anti-magnetic timepiece was the 1930 Tissot Antimagnetique. No points for originality in that name.

The Antimagnetique’s movement included a palladium balance spring, balance wheel and lever. Given how much palladium costs, it was expensive and honestly, wouldn’t stand up to even the most basic modern movement. It was a step in the right direction, though. New, antimagnetic materials wouldn’t crop up for decades later in any solid way. Instead, IWC would utilise an ancient scientific device: the Faraday Cage.

When watchmakers talk about soft iron inner shells, this is what they mean, and it was a device first used by scientist Michael Faraday in 1836. It basically disperses electromagnetic fields and IWC miniaturised it into a watch, first in their military pilots’ pieces, then for civilians into the 1955 Ingenieur. This version of the Ingenieur, the Ref. 666, was a world away from the Genta-re-designed version we got in the 1970s and again much more recently, and this emphasis on scientific development is where the collection gets its name – not the over-engineered, screwed bezel and love of industrial style. It worked well enough that it could stand up to 1,000 gauss. That brings us to CERN.

CERN, founded in 1956, is the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Along with a host of scientists and underground facilities, it’s home to the 27km tunnel of superconducting magnets that is the Large Hadron Collider, created to smash particles together at mind-boggling speed. It’s the pinnacle of human discovery on Earth and, for the scientists there, a bit of a problem. The key thing there is ‘superconducting magnets’, and the collider’s not the only part of CERN that uses plenty of magnetic forces.

The scientists needed watches that could withstand regular exposure and, for a project of this magnet-ude (sorry), who better than Rolex? Thus, the Milgauss was born, a watch that could withstand… 1,000 gauss. Yes, they were a year late to that particular party, but between the association with Switzerland’s most important scientific installation and the awesome design of the Milgauss itself easily Rolex’s most underrated watch it’s no surprise that it became the de facto poster child for advanced anti-magnetism.

The battle continued if a bit subdued over the next 50-odd years. By this point most watch brands were using non-ferrous metals for components, so watches were becoming naturally more magnetic resistant. One high point was the IWC Ingenieur 500,000 A/m, which was resistant to around 6,250 gauss. Rather than the usual soft iron inner cage, this version used a niobium-zirconium hairspring, anti-magnetic escape wheel and pallet fork, and rotor bearings made of ruby and was by far the most anti-magnetic watch of its era, something that wouldn’t be beaten until the turn of the millennium, when 2001 changed watchmaking.

2001 was the year of the Ulysse Nardin Freak. Not only was this insane carousel monster uniquely designed, but it was the first watch to use silicon components. There’s a lot to love about silicon. It’s consistent to produce, it’s resistant to temperature, it creates very little friction and it’s entirely amagnetic. You already know what happened next. Silicon took the watch world by storm. Swatch Group and Omega in particular, embraced silicon, creating entire escapements from the advanced material.

Ulysse Nardin continued with it in everything from movements to marquetry and Zenith even tried to build a cutting-edge new movement entirely from silicon in the Defy LAB which didn’t take off, for better or worse. This has gotten to the point where today, anti-magnetic no longer means it can survive a hundred fridge magnets. Omega’s Master Chronometer standard tests their watches to 15,000 gauss, the same level as a working MRI machine, and that’s just what they’re tested to. They can in reality achieve much, much higher, but saying ‘it can survive an MRI machine’ is good marketing.

And honestly, for most of us, that’s all anti-magnetism really is. Sure, fridge magnets can wreck vintage watches, but most everyday modern watches won’t be impacted unless you’re working on a Japanese bullet train. And let’s be honest, in the same way being able to talk up a dive watch’s 1,000m water resistance is just a bit of fun, so too is this. But for those few, those scientists and engineers, that still need a watch in environments that hate accurate timekeeping, there’s still a niche, be that CERN, just outside of Geneva, or elsewhere in the world.

​Oracle Time 

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