At times it happens that the smallest of details imply the largest of changes and things were no different in 2000, when Rolex has introduced its new, 4130 chronograph calibre, hence replacing the 4030 used until then.Hidden behind this single-digit change was the beginning of a whole new era and the arrival of a revolutionary, new, in-house movement. Let us discover now one of the finest mechanical chronograph calibres in the world, the Rolex Perpetual 4130.
The word “Perpetual” in the name of the Rolex Perpetual 4130 refers to the automatic winding system that Rolex first introduced back in 1931 and has painstakingly refined ever since. The winding rotor and its advanced wheel train together move innumerable times throughout all the years and decades and they do so with great reliability and efficiency, replenishing the Rolex Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona’s power reserve to its maximum. And yet, an aspect that goes beyond these impressive technicalities is the direct, personal link this creates between the wearer and the watch.
The 4130, a fully in-house designed and produced calibre, has surpassed its predecessor, the 4030 in a number of crucial ways. One of these is the application of a vertical clutch in place of the horizontal clutch. The clutch, just like in a car, is a vital part of the inner workings of the watch: in a chronograph, its task is connecting the chronograph with the timekeeping mechanism of the movement. You see, although we count on our watch countless times a day to learn the exact time, the chronograph we use only occasionally to time finite periods of time.Consequently, it is the clutch that will engage and disengage the three hands – the central seconds as well as the 30-minute and 12-hour totalizers – from the base movement.
The traditional horizontal clutch, not used by the 4130, relies on a set of wheels arranged in the same plane. When the chronograph is not in operation, some of these wheels are still turning, while another wheel is stationary. When the chronograph mechanism is started, using the top pusher in the side of the case, the mechanism will slide these turning wheels towards the central wheel, hence meshing the turning wheels with the one that, up until now, had been stationary. In this moment, a stopped and a moving wheel begin to mesh, which inevitably leads to wear and tear, as well as to the backwards or forwards jump of the central chronograph seconds’ hand – something that can be observed with the naked eye and that also leads to inaccurate timing.
The vertical clutch, that poses a much greater technical challenge both in design and manufacturing, eliminates all the aforementioned issues associated with the horizontal clutch. As its name implies, drive is transferred not via horizontally arranged wheels, but rather in a vertical direction, via the engagement and disengagement of the two flat surfaces of two discs. Because there are no two teeth profiles forcibly meshed together, both the excessive wear as well as the jumping start of the central seconds are eliminated.
The Rolex Perpetual 4130 pairs the vertical clutch with a column wheel to ensure reliable and accurate functioning of the chronograph; what’s more, this pairing also provides the sort of sound, feel and feedback, that we should expect from the most intelligently designed, high-end chronograph calibre.
When designing the 4130, Rolex has dedicated special attention to one of the most crucial comfort aspects of modern mechanical watch movements: power reserve. Although it is by every chance that one wouldn’t want to spend and excessive period of time separated from his or her carefully chosen and cherished timepiece, it may occasionally happen that one decides to not wear a watch for the duration of, say, a weekend. Most modern luxury mechanical watches to this day offer a power reserve between 38 and 48 hours, which means that the watch will have stopped long before Monday morning arrives – this entails the tiresome process of unscrewing the crown, resetting all indications and synchronizing the watch with a reference time source. By contrast, the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona offers a power reserve of approximately 72 hours, that is three full days, meaning that should the watch be taken off on a Friday night, it will still be operating silently and precisely on Monday morning, still indicating the correct time. The next step for one is to just simply put the watch on and trust the Perpetual winding system with topping up the power reserve of the watch.
Last, but certainly not least, we should highlight the Rolex Parachrom hairspring. The hairspring, paired with the balance wheel, is the guardian of time in every mechanical watch. The Parachrom hairspring, just like the 4130 calibre, made its debut in 2000, and it is novel for its exclusive, patented alloy of niobium, zirconium and oxygen.
Rolex has further advanced the Parachrom hairspring in 2005, when it introduced a new patented process to modify the surface of the spring and thereby further reinforce its long-term stability and lend it its characteristic blue color, a nod towards the heritage of Swiss watchmaking.
There are only a handful of manufactures in the Swiss watch industry capable of producing their own hairsprings – and Rolex is the most prestigious and advanced member of this exclusive club, thanks to its extremely high quality standards, developments and production volume. The manufacturing of the Parachrom hairspring Rolex had to plan in a way that respects the extremely demanding tolerances: just one micron deviance in the thickness or height of a finished hairspring can affect its timekeeping performance noticeably.
The result of all these efforts is a calibre that, just like every Rolex movement produced today, bears the Rolex Superlative Chronometer certification, having passed the most stringent in-house quality control tests that include a daily accuracy tolerance of just two seconds.
The Rolex Perpetual 4130 is the materialization of tireless and peerless engineering work, something that amazes with its accuracy, durability, reliability and refined functioning.
