URWERK reinvents its iconic satellite hours complication. A new mechanism for a new scenography. The UR-150 Scorpion appears in a rounded shell. But don’t be fooled by its calm, relaxed facade: the UR-150 hides a fearsome device, a lightning sting whose lethal function is triggered in a hundredth of a second.

The model’s retrograde mechanism is reminiscent of those developed for mechanical automaton : a flying carousel bearing the three hour satellites follows a route determined by a cam. The latter orchestrates the motion of the carousel, a performance that lasts precisely 60 minutes. As the hour hand reaches ’60’, depicted in green numerals, an URWERK spring triggers the UR-150’s lightning-fast attack: the retrograde hand makes a 240° jump and the hour satellites simultaneously rotates 270°. “It’s like a perfect alignment of the stars, a perfect storm”, says Felix Baumgartner.