NOMOS Glashütte Movements Starting with the ETA Peseux 7001
NOMOS Ludwig 38 Date ref. 231
Today, NOMOS Glashütte has 13 movements in their arsenal, 7 self-winding and 6 manual winding. They’ve come a long way from the days of using the ETA Peseux movement in the 1990s. Let’s take a look at how they got there.
When NOMOS was founded in 1991, they first started using a modified ETA Peseux 7001. The 7001 was first introduced in 1971, and had 21,6000 bph, 17 jewels, was shock resistant, manual-winding, and had a 42-hour power reserve. It was a robust movement and was already known for being modified and used by the likes of Omega, Blancpain, and Montblanc. NOMOS Glashütte too, made their modifications, incorporating many aspects of traditional Glashütte styles in the finishing such as: blued screws, ‘Glashütte Streifenschliff’ (Glashütte stripes), and a sunburst pattern (solar grinding) on the crown and barrels. The finishing is said to have been done by Soprod. These changes led ETA to request NOMOS Glashütte to stop using their name on the movement, reportedly in 1997, and that led to NOMOS changing the name of their movement to the NOMOS 1T by 2002. Specifically, NOMOS now replaced the 7001’s plate and balance cock with gold plated components decorated in a style named after contemporary watchmaker Rainer Langeleist (Langeleist-Perlage). The most significant difference between the 7001 and the new NOMOS 1T was the incorporation of Triovis fine regulation. The ‘T’ in the name of the movement stood for ‘Trivois’, which is a patented precision adjustment system originally developed by Valdar SA and patented in 1967. Essentially, the outer toothing of the regulator disc is reached by a micro-threaded screw that can adjust it more precisely than previous methods. The 1T also used a Nivrarox 1A hairspring, still had Incabloc shock protection, and upgraded the power reserve to 45.
NOMOS subsequently introduced the NOMOS Glashütte 1 TS (‘S’ for hacking seconds), the NOMOS 1 TSD (‘D’ for date), and eventually the NOMOS 1 TSP (when they finally introduced the three-quarter plate). The three-quarter plate is notable, not only for being invented by Adolph Lange in the 1864 in Glashütte, but also because it is less thick than a full plate and allows for real watch nerds to more easily admire the intricacies of the movement (to the detriment of your watchmaking friends that have to service your watch). NOMOS went on to add a power indicator to the 1T (1TSDPG – there was also a 1TSDP), before going on to work on their own in-house movement; the NOMOS Alpha, first released in the Tangomat in 2005. Don’t worry we’ll cover the Alpha in due time.
By: Andres Ibarguen