It took 50,000 hours to develop the highly complex minute repeater strike train for the Grande Complication and the Portuguese Minute Repeater. It is operated by an eye-catching repeating slide on the left-hand side of the case and chimes out the time in crystal-clear tones: the hours on the lower-pitched of the two gongs, followed by a double strike on both gongs for the quarters and finally a single strike on the higher-pitched gong for the minutes. Every gong is individually handmade and carefully tuned for pitch and tonal purity. The all-or-nothing piece, as it is known, ensures that the mechanism will never chime out an incomplete – and thus incorrect – series of acoustic tones even if the repeating slide is released too early
