In the early days of watchmaking, dropping a timepiece often meant something awful would happen to your watch. Any impact would often be fatal. The most common casualty was the balance staff, a tiny, needle-thin pin that allows the watch's heart (the balance wheel) to beat. These pivots are intentionally fragile to reduce friction, but even a short fall onto a hard floor would snap them.
So then along comes another revolution in watchmaking: Invented in 1934 by Swiss engineers Georges Braunschweig and Fritz Marti at Portescap SA, Incabloc changed everything. It was the first widely adopted "shock absorber" for watches.
By the mid-20th century, the system was so respected that many watch brands began printing the word "Incabloc" directly on their dials as a mark of quality—much like modern computers might feature an "Intel Inside" sticker.
How It Works: The Lyre Spring:
The genius of Incabloc lies in its simplicity. It uses a tiny, uniquely shaped "lyre" spring to hold the delicate bearing jewels in place.
Here's a lovely old stylised, if a little odd, Incabloc advert from the 1950s:
If you drop your watch, the impact causes the balance staff to shift. Instead of snapping, the staff pushes against the jewels, which are allowed to move slightly because they are mounted on the flexible lyre spring. Once the shock is absorbed by the spring and the stronger parts of the movement, the spring instantly pushes the jewels back into their exact original position. Genius.
Before this technology, a dropped watch required a highly skilled watchmaker to replace the entire balance staff. Today, Incabloc is the industry standard, found in everything from rugged field watches to high-end luxury pieces. It transforms a delicate instrument into a robust companion capable of withstanding the bumps and jolts of daily life. If you've ever had to manipulate the tiny spring and remove the jewel for cleaning and oiling you will understand how incredibly delicate it is and yet how strong. There are other types of shock-absorbing like the Kif system, but the Incabloc is certainly the market leader.
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