The first hairsprings were drawn from steel, one of the few materials pliable enough at the time to be coaxed into a fine wire. But steel came with weaknesses: It warped under shocks, faltered with temperature shifts, and succumbed to magnetism. It wasn’t until the 1930s that Swiss engineer Dr. Reinhard Straumann offered a solution with his patented Nivarox hairspring — a nickel-iron alloy that did a decent job shrugging off some of those influences. Nearly a century later, Nivarox (now owned by Swatch Group) is still the industry’s workhorse hairspring.
Naturally, horology’s overachievers weren’t content to stop there. In 2002, the silicon hairspring made its debut, offering clear advantages over Nivarox: Superior resistance to magnetism, ultrap70 precise manufacturing, lighter weight, immunity to corrosion, and consistency in production. But there was a catch — it was patented, restricting its use to Rolex, Patek Philippe, the Swatch Group’s stable of brands, and Ulysse Nardin. It was also worryingly brittle.
So, what was an outsider like Tag Heuer to do? Simple: Ignore the paved road and invent its own alternative. The brand turned to carbon — a material that’s not only (also) completely antimagnetic, but lighter and less fragile than silicon. In 2019, it unveiled its first carbon hairspring in the Carrera Heuer 02T Nanograph Tourbillon and the Autavia Isograph Chronometer. Both, however, ran into technical and manufacturing snags, and soon disappeared from the market not long after they arrived.
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