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While the vintage watch market continues to experience an overall boom, one greatly undervalued segment is early to mid 20th-century women's cocktail watches. Made decades before the onset of the quartz revolution, these usually tiny and highly decorative timepieces by the likes of Rolex, Vacheron Constantin, Cartier and Jaeger-LeCoultre were powered by some of the most impressive mechanical movements imaginable.
The world's smallest calibre, the rectangular Jaeger-LeCoultre 101, has been celebrated in recent years thanks to its current limited production and red-carpet outings on stars and socialites. But little has been heard about the Blancpain R550 calibre - at the time of its 1956 debut, the smallest round movement ever made - and the Ladybird (originally Coccinelle) watch that housed it.
The R550 itself was barely the size of a fingernail; a mere 11.85mm in diameter. Without the help of modern machinery, miniscule components, many barely the width of a human hair, were produced and assembled by hand to create a movement with 40 hours of power reserve.
An achievement by even today's standards, the R550 was an outstanding feat of engineering in the 1950s. It involved redesigning the gear train to include one more wheel, miniaturising existing anti-shock systems to ensure the tiny timepiece was as robust as possible,...