![]() ![]() Aside from its desirable physical attributes – the 2.3mm thickness and self-winding functionality – the 12P provided yet another lesson in sound commercial strategy: in this era, around 60 percent of the movements manufactured by Piaget were still being sold to third parties. ![]() in which the oscillating weight that winds the mainspring was first assimilated into the same plane as the gear train and regulating organ). This patent documents a crucial stage in the micro-rotor’s development (i.e. In 1958, Valentin himself filed a patent with Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Intellectual Property for a watch “fitted with an automatic winding device”, making specific provision for a “particular arrangement of the oscillating weight”. Despite the absence of any visible complication, the 12P embraced a very elegant, typically Piaget solution to the technical problem of incorporating a self-winding mechanism. Apropos of the previously mentioned mother/father analogy, this next calibre (launched at Basel in 1960) was intended to solidify Piaget’s appeal in the category of ultra-thin men’s dress watches. With the 9P up to the task of powering Piaget’s many bejewelled creations and impish ‘secret watches’ – we’ll come back to those later – Valentin intensified his efforts around the 12P. Florence Müller, a fashion historian, explains the shift in her book Watchmakers and Jewellers Since 1874: The 9P’s arrival heralded an era of superior legibility (simply put: case-to-dial ratios became much more functional) and in doing so, introduced a new element for watch designers to emphasise. Previously, ladies’ watches – the 9P had originally been engineered to serve this segment – were too diminutive to be functional, with the vast majority of each piece’s visible surfaces occupied by the casing. That might seem trivial by the standards of modern watch brands, but this flattening and widening of the proverbial playing field embodied a significant technical hurdle. The ‘9’ prefix was also an oblique reference to the diameter of dials that this movement could accommodate: ergo, anything up to 2cm or 9 lignes. When it was unveiled in 1957, the 9P measured an extremely svelte 2mm: only marginally thicker than most 10-cent coins. Valentin developed the 9P and 12P simultaneously, with the first (a manual movement) serving as a foundation for the second more advanced, self-winding calibre. ![]()
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