A. Lange & Söhne Richard Lange "Pour le Mérite"

Richard Lange "Pour le Mérite" is a luxury watch by A. Lange & Söhne, part of the Pour le Mérite line.

The third Lange wristwatch with a fusée-and-chain transmission is named after Richard Lange, the company founder’s oldest son and technical director of the family business. The extremely demanding complication has the purpose to optimize the precision. It overcomes the greatest disadvantage of the winding train – the unavoidable loss of torque – by intelligently harnessing the principle of levers.

The heart of the watch is the manual winding manufacture movement L044.1.

A further peculiarity is the bright shining, three-part white enamel dial, which is perfectly readable with its slender black Roman numerals for the hours and the small red Arabic numerals for 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes.

This model was presented in the beginning of 2009 in limited edition (in platinum 50, in red gold 200 pieces).

Reference: 260.025 (platinum), 260.032 (red gold) Movement: Manual windings manufacture movement L044.1, 21.600 A/h Fusée-and-chain transmission Three-quarter plate made of untreated Nickel silver Decorated and assembled by hand Precision-adjusted in five positions Balance as well as escape-wheel and fourth-wheel cocks engraved by hand Components: 279 (not including the chain with its 636 parts) 33 jewels, 2 in screwed gold chatons Shock-resistant glucydur screwed balance with poising screws Balance spring made in-house Precision beat adjustment mechanism with lateral setscrew and whiplash spring Power reserve 36 h Case: 18 ct red gold or platinum D 40.5 mm, H 10.7 mm Sapphire crystal Transparent caseback with sapphire crystal Dial: Tree-part enamel dial Hands: blued steel Functions: Hours, minutes, small seconds Hacking seconds Bracelet: Hand-sewn crocodile leather strap with tang-type buckle in platinum or red gold Limited edition: Red gold: 200 pieces, platinum: 50 pieces