The Seven Spheres – Marco Lang Creates Something That Can Only Be Copied
Abraham-Louis Breguet had a problem. Pocket watches hang vertically in a waistcoat pocket. Gravity pulls unevenly on the balance and escapement — differently depending on position, always disruptive. His tourbillon cage, patented in 1801, rotated the escapement and balance once per minute around its own axis. This way, positional errors average out, and timekeeping accuracy improves. Elegant solution. Elegant principle.
Marco Lang Quelle: Instagram
Two hundred years later, the conversation turns — literally and figuratively.
From Tool to Accolade
The tourbillon was never designed for wristwatches. On the wrist, the watch moves constantly, so positional errors average out anyway — the mechanical benefit is minimal. Yet the tourbillon became the epitome of watchmaking competence. Whoever can build a tourbillon has passed the test. It is the accolade of haute horlogerie.
Thomas Prescher took it to extremes. In 2004 at Baselworld, he presented the first three-axis tourbillon wristwatch in history — a feat the watchmaking community had deemed impossible. Three independent rotation axes in one case, constant force in the cage, 327 components. I know Thomas personally. What he built is extraordinary — craftsmanship, intellect, and conviction all at once.
Vianney Halter took a different path in 2013. His Deep Space Tourbillon is also three-axis — but the three axes rotate deliberately out of sync: 40 seconds, 6 minutes, 30 minutes. Never does the exact same position repeat. The movement wins the GPHG Innovation Prize in 2013. I’ve seen this watch twice — in development and at the Masters of Horology 2024 in Geneva. I know Vianney well. The Deep Space is more than a timepiece; it’s a statement about the space-age aesthetics of its era.
Both watches — Prescher’s and Halter’s — remain true to the tourbillon principle: one cage, multiple axes, the same fundamental concept as 1801. Just more radical.
The Accolade Becomes Cheap
The problem with an accolade in times of scaling and economic competition: it’s repeatable. The tourbillon is a principle, not a secret. Whoever masters the craft can build it. And today, everyone does. Chinese manufacturers produce tourbillons for a few hundred euros. The thing that was once the most difficult feat in watchmaking has become mass-produced goods. Not poorly made — simply democratized.
This is no criticism of China. It’s the logic of technology: what can be learned, gets learned. What can be copied, gets copied.
Marco Lang Asks the Question Anew
Marco Lang doesn’t build a tourbillon. That’s the starting point, and it matters.
“The Seven Spheres” — Caliber ml-02/7sp, created over 3.5 years of work beginning summer 2022 in his atelier in Dresden — are seven nested titanium rings. Each ring is offset 30 degrees from the next. They are driven by six planetary gears in a 1:2 ratio and a seventh in a 1:2.25 ratio. Four parallel mainsprings via a central ball-bearing system. The result: a continuous, never-repeating motion of all seven rings simultaneously, at different speeds, in different directions.
There is no cage. No axis in the tourbillon sense. No compensation of positional errors as the goal. Just the cosmos in a watch.
The inspiration comes from elsewhere: Carl Sagan’s 1997 film adaptation of the novel “Contact” — an elegantly rotating three-ring machine from outer space that nobody understands, but everyone watches. The Ptolemaic cosmos with its seven planetary spheres. The Copernican system that orders the same number differently. Seven spheres that have rotated above us since time immemorial — and now on the wrist.
Marco mentioned in meetings between 2022 and 2024 that he was planning something, but now we finally know what it is. And I certainly didn’t expect this. How could I? 🙂
What’s Inside the Watch
The case is platinum 950, 42 mm diameter, 18 mm high — including the sapphire crystal dome under which the spheres work. Sapphire caseback. Alligator strap with sharkskin lining. Platinum folding clasp. Water-resistant to 5 bar. The dial bears red minute numerals in solid silver, framed by two hand-guilloched “Breguet lines.” The hands, floating in blue-tempered steel, display hours and minutes. 43 rubies in the movement, two decorative diamonds.
Power reserve: 55 hours. Frequency: 3 Hz, 21,600 half-oscillations. Four-armed balance with eccentric regulation.
There is no price — at least not a public one. No edition size, no limited run. You order this watch directly from the watchmaker in Dresden. You wait. You commission someone who builds something that didn’t exist before.
What Can Be Copied — and What Cannot
Here lies the difference that preoccupies me about this watch.
Anyone who has learned the craft can build a tourbillon. That’s no insult — it’s the nature of a mechanical principle. Prescher was the first to put the three-axis design into a wristwatch, Halter recoded it aesthetically. But the principle remains: cage rotates, positional errors are compensated. That can be taught and learned. That is technique.
The Seven Spheres solve no problem. There is no problem they solve. They are not a tool, not a complication in the traditional sense. They are a kinetic object that dwells within a watch — a kinetic sculpture with timekeeping function, or a watch with kinetic sculpture inside the case, depending on how you look at it. Speaking of which, rotation — Marco has a solution for that too, the Janus face. 😉
Whoever copies this is a copyist. Period. There is no independent reinvention of this object. The tourbillon exists independently of Breguet — as an idea, as a principle, as a repeatable solution. The Seven Spheres exist as a singular creation. That is a different ontological status.
Marco himself puts it this way: “My work is pure idealism, paired with rigor and uncompromising demands for beauty and quality.”
Idealism. Not problem-solving. That sounds like art. And by the way, artificial intelligence or a robot like the one wandering around at Watches & Wonders cannot do such a (freaky) thing. That is the human niche of the future.
