Yes, it was designed for pocket fob watches, where it may actually have improved accuracy, but overall turned out to be a pretty bad idea. In a fob watch, it's dubious, but in a wristwatch, it's pointless and downright bad engineering.
Now I do appreciate the craft of watchmakers, and the way we can have a fully mechanical device that tells the time reasonably accurately. I also like the idea of "vanity engineering", where the idea of cost optimization is thrown to the wind, and one sets out to create "the absolute best possible", resulting in a ridiculously expensive device that is both a status symbol for rich people, and a museum piece of engineering as art.
But a bloody tourbillon in a wristwatch is not "vanity engineering". It's bad engineering, plain and simple. It's something like a challenge for watchmakers to prove their worth, by building something extremely complex, hard to maintain, and utterly pointless. In Greek mythology, the gods punished the rebellious titan Sisyphos with something like this.
It may be attractive to moneyed individuals in need of an outlet, but to me as an engineer, it's an affront to everything just and right in the world. It's like eating food and then throwing it up so you can eat more. The height of decadence and moral putrefaction.
Apparently the Tourbillon is an old invention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourbillon. Reminds me Dave's recent video about the effect of gravity on crystal clocks.
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