Why is Karl-Friedrich Scheufele Revolution’s 2018 Person of the Year? Check this out. In 2016, Scheufele collected the Geneva Grand Prix’s Aiguille d’Or, the competition’s grand prize, for the ethereal Ferdinand Berthoud regulator with a low-frequency tourbillon and suspended chain and fusée. As a result, he became part of the jury for the 2017 competition where his watch, the Chopard L.U.C Full Strike, was hot in the running for the grand prize. So when it came time for the other jury members — including my friends Aurel Bacs, Eric Ku and Nick Foulkes — to discuss the Full Strike, Scheufele, ever the gentleman, excused himself so that they could remain totally impartial.
They played the watch and its song was staggering. Incendiary. Transcendent. Because it was the first minute repeater to use sapphire-crystal gongs. These gongs were milled from the same type of monobloc piece that watch crystals are made from. Moreover, this innovation embodied everything that Scheufele holds dearest. Because with every L.U.C complication that has been launched — from his first game-changing micro-rotor COSC-certified, Geneva Seal-receiving Calibre 1.96 unveiled back in 1996, which famed journalist Walt Odets called “very possibly the finest automatic movement in Switzerland,” to his COSC-certified 4 Hz tourbillon, his automatic integrated column-wheel, vertical-clutch chronograph with precise jump-minute counter and zero reset for the small seconds, his 8 Hz high-frequency watch, and, yes, the world’s first minute repeater with sapphire-crystal gongs — Scheufele has elevated the game to the point that he has changed it forever.
So for 2018, Scheufele is on the jury of the Geneva Grand Prix for the second consecutive year, and while he’s there, we thought it appropriate to recognize all the amazing innovations that he has brought to modern horology over the past 21 years. The fact that he’s blazed such an extraordinary trail while always remaining a consummate gentleman, makes him more than Revolution’s 2018 Person of the Year — it makes him a constant inspiration to us.
