Today is the World Premiere of the DEEP SPACE TOURBILLON by Vianney Halter and we’ve finally been able to answer the question: What has Vianney Halter been doing for the past three years?

“Sleeping mostly”, he says, “and watching lots of classic science fiction…”

Indeed, what started out as a recuperative break from work quickly morphed into a running addiction to science-fiction television series. Voraciously consuming DVD box-set after box-set, from classic Star Trek to Battlestar Galacatica and then moving on to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Halter described the process by which he immersed himself in this new-found passion, following the stories contained within.

Inspired by the themes and imagery of science fiction, he started to create a watch that a space traveler would take everywhere with him on his voyages — just as 16th-century maritime explorers would with the marine chronometer.

What has resulted from this process is what Halter terms as a philosophical inquiry into the nature of space exploration, where we have to be mindful of four dimensions; the three physical ones we know, and the last, which is time. Extraterrestrial intelligent life, he says, might exist in far more dimensions than we might know of — the Deep Space Tourbillon represents not only his skill and imagination as a watchmaker, but also represents our unique existence as beings in four dimensions (three scalar and one vector).

Essentially what we see in this new watch is a triple-axis central tourbillon, with hours and minutes indications given by the blued hands arching in from the periphery of the dial.

The innermost tourbillon cage, rotates once every 40 seconds about the same axis as the balance wheel. The cage is further rotated about a perpendicular plane, installed in a structure that completes one full turn every six minutes. This entire assembly, which Halter calls the cradle, is then rotated within the confines of the dial once every 30 minutes.

This is a relatively compact watch and fits well on the wrist. It certainly looks the part as well, with the domed sapphire crystal. According to Halter, the Deep Space Tourbillon is not a limited-edition piece and its numbers will only be restricted by limitations of production capacity.