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At the Patek Philippe watch factory not far from Geneva, Stephan Wagoun turned to a tour group and displayed a tiny speck resting on his fingertip. An observer squinted his eyes and, taking a closer look, saw something that may have been a tiny metal paisley--the teardrop shape you used to see on neckties.
Wagoun, a graduate of the Ecole d'Horlogerie de Geneve, the Geneva Watchmaking School, is a mecanicien-regleur CNC at Patek Philippe. That translates to machinist and adjuster of CNC machinery. It's his job to figure out how to machine the tiny parts that make so many of the complications--those mechanisms that keep track of day, date, and what-not--that add...
