Continental Flying Tourbillon As opposed to regular tourbillon regulators in which the carriage is fitted in a plate and secured by a bridge, in flying tourbillons, as invented by Alfred Helwig, the lower bearing of the carriage is fitted in the plate in the regular way, the upper bearing is fitted beneath the carriage, and the carriage is built around free (flying) arbor. On the top of the carriage, there are neither pivot nor bridge. In the early 1920s Albert Helwig (1886-1974), technical director of the Deutsche Uhrmacherschule, invented what is now commonly known as a Continental flying tourbillon: "?My idea of constructing the free-standing cage that is without a bridge, was to make a tourbillon as flat as possible ? The weight of the cage is only 700 milligrams; no one believed that it would be strong enough. Therefore, I tied a string on one side of the cage and another one on the other side but with a weight of 250 grams. I then hung this in the display case at the entrance hall to the Deutsche Uhrma-cherschule and left it hanging there for four weeks, which stopped all critics?" Helwig made a few and some were made by his students under his supervision. They were magnificent horological pieces of machinery. In one of his letters he wrote: "?Several of my students have built tourbillons in the school under my guidance at their own expense. We all promised to each other never to sell them and if at all then not below the current value of three kilograms (over six pounds) of pure gold?" One of his talented students was Woldemar Fleck, who made his masterpiece with Helwig in 1931. According to his son, he held to the watch until his death. Constinental flying tourbillons were made as masterpieces by the best pupils of the Deutsche Uhrmacherschule in Glashütte, according to the principles and under the control of Professor Alfred Helwig, represent the ultimate achievement in the making of revolving escapements. The few examples made at the Lange School can certainly be counted amongst the masterpieces of German horology. To commemorate these achievements, in 1999 Lange introduced a new wristwatch model, called "Helwig" employing this type of flying tourbillon. Only 25 pieces were made. One of these "Helwig" flying tourbillon chronometers was sold by Antiquorum in the sale of the "A Tribute to Precision and Complicated Timepieces, November 11, 2001, lot 334.