Additionally, the innovative use of “luminous material” has become something of a power play in fine watchmaking – it was only a few weeks ago that IWC unveiled its all-luminous concept watch, for example – and in recent years we’ve seen a number of examples of luminous material being used as an aesthetic medium rather than a functional one.
But luminous paint isn’t what Panerai is going for with the Supermersible Elux Lab ID: instead, an array of LEDs powered by electricity generated by the movement illuminate the watch’s functions.
Press the push button on the left side of the case to turn the light on, and press it again to turn it off. This simple concept was developed by the brand’s special projects team, which goes by the name Laboratoriao di Idee (Lab-ID for short). 8 years Pontrué said that has paid off.
“They have requirements that you could basically write on a postage stamp: you give them time, you have to get a patent,” he says, noting that the patent is as much the ultimate goal as the product itself. “This is the only project where we don’t have any idea of the deadline. We know it will be very expensive and the failure rate is very high. But this doesn’t just introduce something new for Panerai, it has to be groundbreaking for the industry.”
The first of four patents for the Submersible Elux Lab ID (or Elux for short) concerns its activation button. The safety device protects the watch from both shocks and water pressure. “Without this, water pressure could accidentally push the watch down while diving, so the part underneath the watch protects that,” says Anthony Serpuri, Panerai’s head of research and development, who heads Lab ID’s Skunk Works.
Serpuri says his team currently has around 150 projects in the works, but only a few will see the light of day. One of those is the watch’s blue-tinted case material, which is also patented. A type of ceramized titanium that the brand calls Ti-Ceramitech, it consists of a titanium alloy that is plasma electrolytically oxidized (by applying high-current pulses in an electrolytic bath) to produce a thick, scratch-resistant layer of blue ceramic across its entire surface. “The patent covers the material development, specifically the titanium alloy composition to achieve the blue color,” Serpuri says.
But the real business here, of course, is the light show. A handful of luxury watchmakers, including HYT, De Bethune and jeweller Van Cleef & Arpels, have previously experimented with mechanical, on-demand light, but with limited results, providing nothing more than a dull glow for a few seconds.
Panerai’s technology, on the other hand, lights up the entire display of the watch with a multitude of micro LEDs that are said to glow for 30 minutes – in fact, as long as the wearer keeps moving. The Elux is an automatic watch, meaning that the oscillating weight that winds the movement winds the mechanism and creates the glow.
This is achieved by cramming in an extra barrel, a cylinder that houses the watch’s energy store: the mainspring. Most mechanical watches have one of these, but the Elux has six: two are used for keeping time, while the remaining four generate electrical energy via a very small but powerful dynamo device.
