For a long, long time, watch movements have been made primarily of metal. But there's a new kid in town, a so-called wonder material that claims to be completely anti-magnetic and require zero lubrication: silicon. But is it as good as the watch brands would have us believe?

Being a watchmaker is all about battling the laws of physics. Whatever it is you want to do, friction, mass, inertia, gravity, momentum, magnetism, position, movement—it’s all out to get you. Every now and then, however, comes a watchmaker who can seemingly bend these laws to their will to make something that should otherwise be impossible. Meet one of those watchmakers: François-Paul Journe.

How technology has changed in the last hundred years. If you were to ask someone under the age of twenty what the disk icon on the save button means, or to explain why pumping your fist in a circle indicates lowering a car window, you’d probably be treated to a blank expression and perhaps a polite but firm request to stop asking stupid questions, but nevertheless—floppy discs and manually wound windows were barely a few decades ago. Imagine, then, how out of touch we must be with technology from the 1950s …

You probably know TAG Heuer best as the entry-level Swiss luxury watchmaker famous for its big, square Monaco, but I expect you never thought you’d see the day when the following sentence was true: here’s a TAG Heuer that costs over £13,000.