The Crown brand recently created a new company dedicated to the development and sale of atomic clocks. What literally redefine time …
Rolex’s precision quest seems to not know any limits. This year, the Geneva house was already making the buzz at the Watches & Wonders show, unveiling its new Land Dweller collection, with its first caliber clocked at 5 Hertz, or 36,000 alternations per hour. These Oyster Perpetual Land -Dweller benefit from the superlative chronometer certification, redefined by Rolex in 2015, an accuracy of the order of –2/+2 seconds per day.
But the new company just created in Neuchâtel by the watchmaking giant goes much further: it could help review the very definition of a second, and therefore universal time. Rolex Quantum is installed a stone’s throw from the charming observatory of Neuchâtel, but also of the CSEM laboratories, the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnics. “Following the excellent collaboration between the CSEM and Rolex for the design of a new generation of atomic clock, it was agreed between the two partners to continue with a technology transfer, explains the Geneva house in Le Figaro. To this end, a new company was created under the name of “Rolex Quantum SA” in May 2025. The company will deploy its activity in Neuchâtel in order to benefit from the proximity of the CSEM. Rolex Quantum SA’s mission, the development, manufacturing and sale of optical atomic clocks. »»
« The purpose of the company is the development, manufacture and sale of optical atomic clocks, as well as all products related to the field of time and frequency measurement with very high precision ”specify the registers of Swiss companies. Rolex therefore intends to produce optical atomic clocks in Neuchâtel. But what is it? Neither more nor less than the entry of the watchmaking industry into the era of quantum time … These rubidium clocks should indeed make it possible to improve techniques for measuring universal time. At present, hundreds of atomic clocks around the world contribute to the definition of international atomic time. But the optical atomic clocks with rubidium are both simpler, much more compact, and it seems the most precise ever created: they are able to subdivide a single second into 750 quadrillons … Each of these tiny sections of time represents approximately a femtosecond. Thus, counting the oscillations of light of these optical atomic clocks, one can be certain of the time to a femtoseconde near … enough to make these atomic clocks to the rubidium the replacements announced microwave models with cesium 133, which measure the second since 1967 … by 2030, these hundred times more precise clocks could be used to calculate International atomic (TAI). And if, tomorrow, the brand with the crown, in addition to proposing the most desirable and precise watches in the world, helped to redefine the second, the unity of time of the international system? With its optical atomic clocks, Rolex would define the new stallion of time … and who knows, would also rewrite the standards of watchful precision and timing, by combining mechanical precision calibers and time repository on a atomic scale.
