Jumping hours | Double calendar | Moon phases | 1915 | Gold

Sílvio Pereira

8 hours ago

6 min read

Series: GRAND COMPLICATIONS

By: Sílvio Pereira

Functions

1 - Digital jumping hours;

2 - Minutes;

3 - Seconds;

4 - Moon phases;

5 - Day of the month;

6 - Day of the week;

Technical data

- Lépine-type pocket watch. Digital jumping hours, double calendar with phases of the moon. Dated 1905

- Serial number: 18971

- Maker: Anonymous

- Country - Switzerland

- Year of manufacture: 1915

- Calibre: classic bridge layout. Unnumbered

- Movement protection: gold dust cover.

- Escapement type: Swiss lever

- Balance: bimetallic, temperature-compensated, with Breguet hairspring

- Power reserve: 36 hours

- Frequency: 18,000 vph

- Jewels: 25

- Case material: 18 ct gold.

- Dial: enamel, free of flaws or hairlines

- Hours: jumping, at 12 o'clock

- Minutes: central hand

- Small seconds: at 6 o'clock

- Day of the month: at 3 o'clock

- Day of the week - at 9 o'clock

- Moon phases: at 6 o'clock

- Case diameter: 48.3 mm

- Thickness: 15.7 mm

- Weight: 90.62 g

- The mainspring is wound by the crown at 12 o'clock.

- Hands: pear-shaped minute hand. Set by the crown, with the stem release push-piece at 11 o'clock.

- Numerals: jumping Arabic numerals for the hours. Arabic numerals for the five-minute intervals and markers for the rest.

- Seconds: Arabic numerals for the five-second intervals and markers for the rest.

- Crystal: in excellent condition.

- Case back number: 18971

Overall assessment - A gold jumping-hour watch with double calendar and moon phases, in immaculate condition.

The story of this watch

A wealthy resident of the city of Porto by the name of Fernando Santos, born in 1890, with interests and holdings in the Café de S. Tomé e Príncipe company, around 1914 ordered from a Porto watch shop, which in turn had it made by a Geneva firm, a special watch conceived by himself and which was to have some very specific features. About a year later he was presented with this magnificent work of art and micro-engineering.

A unique piece; there is no other like it.

The piece was handed down from generation to generation, and I am fortunate enough to be a friend of the last descendant. When I learned that he had contacted Christie's to put the watch up for auction, I stepped in first, made a very considerable financial effort and bought it.

A. Kaiser | Mechanical Digital | Jumping hours and minutes | 1895 | Gold

Functions

1 - Digital jumping hours;

2 - Digital jumping minutes;

3 - Seconds.

Technical data

- Savonnette-type (hunter) pocket watch. Digital jumping hours and minutes. Dated 1890

- Functions: digital jumping hours and minutes, and seconds.

- Serial number: 681

- Maker: A. Kaiser

- Country - Switzerland

- Year of manufacture: 1890

- Calibre: classic bridge layout. Unnumbered

- Movement protection: brass dust cover.

- Escapement type: Swiss lever

- Balance: bimetallic, temperature-compensated, with flat hairspring

- Power reserve: 36 hours

- Frequency: 18,000 vph

- Jewels: 15

- Case material: 14 ct gold.

- Dial: enamel, free of flaws or hairlines

- Hours: jumping, at 12 o'clock

- Minutes: jumping, at the centre

- Small seconds: at 6 o'clock

- Case diameter: 52.4 mm

- Thickness: 17.4 mm

- Weight: 128.63 g

- The mainspring is wound by the crown at 12 o'clock.

- Hands: pear-shaped minute hand. Set by the crown, with the stem release push-piece at 5 o'clock.

- Numerals: jumping Arabic numerals for the hours. Jumping Arabic numerals for the minutes

- Seconds: Arabic numerals for the five-second intervals and markers for the rest.

- Crystal: in excellent condition.

- Case back number: 681

Overall assessment - A gold mechanical digital watch with jumping hours and minutes, in immaculate condition.

History of the mechanical digital watch with jumping hours (Jump hour)

The mechanical digital watch, at least where timekeeping devices are concerned, was created in 1883. An Austrian inventor, Josef Pallweber, aged 25, patented a new way of showing the time. Pallweber granted the licence to IWC, which in turn passed it on to the Swiss maker Cortébert for the French and Belgian markets.

Josef Pallweber and his invention

Pallweber was born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1858 and became an engineer while still young. He began working on a number of inventions focused on digitising the way we read the time. In 1883 he filed a patent that would perpetuate his name in history as the inventor of the jumping-hour complication with a digital display. Like any inventor, he sold the licences for his patent to IWC in 1885, which began creating jumping-hour watches based on this invention. This complication was one of the most important milestones in the history of IWC.

American patent 312754 for Pallweber's invention

In the 1880s, IWC quickly embraced the new invention of a digital pocket watch. Instead of having a conventional dial with hour and minute hands – the analogue approach – the 19th-century digital watch used rotating discs for the hours and minutes. The digits showing the hours and minutes were displayed through two windows in the dial. The seconds were still shown by a hand on a small subdial.

Pallweber II movement of 1884

From the summer of 1884 and in the years that followed, IWC produced many of these Pallweber pocket watches. IWC's sales records reveal that around 16,590 of these watches were made and sold up to the 1890s.

IWC catalogue of 1885 advertising Pallweber watches

IWC Pallweber watches were made to be heirlooms. They were luxury watches by 19th-century standards, yet they still evoked the finest craft traditions.

All of these watches had two windows revealing the hour and minute digits. The dials carried the words “hours” or “minutes” in several different languages, since the watches were sold in various markets, from Russia to Portugal, France, the United Kingdom, Spain and Germany, among others.

The words "hours" and "minutes" on the dial in French

Works of art on the dials

Many Pallweber dials were decorated with hand-painted designs on an enamel base. The digital windows in the dial left room for art. The artists tended to follow the 19th-century school of Naturalism, depicting Switzerland's iconic mountains and landscapes. Other designs included cherubs or floral motifs, sometimes quite elaborate. Depending on the market, these dials were signed in various ways: “International Watch Co.”, or “Patent Automatic Timekeeper”, or “Pat. 24 February 1885”, in many cases with no company name at all.

Pocket watch with Pallweber III movement and rare hand-painted dial, 1887

The cases were sometimes as elaborate as the dials. While most were of unadorned silver, some had very intricate and even fanciful engraving. One early example, first sold in Bombay, India, had a repoussé case, a form of metalwork hammered in relief from the reverse side. As IWC sometimes sold movements alone, owing to the great demand for these watches, different cases were used.

The movements of these watches were also unique, yet still based on the classic principles of Swiss watch movement design. The basis for these movements was IWC's “Elgin II” calibre of the 1880s, a durable design also used in IWC's “regular” analogue pocket watches. However, these new Pallweber watches had no hands fitted to an arbor; instead, the wheels of the mechanism patented by Pallweber were discs for the hours and minutes.

Silver pocket watch with Pallweber III movement, 1887

These movements are also called “jumping hours”, because the hour and minute discs “jump” to the next position as the hours or minutes advanced. The rotating discs and the jumps demanded extra power from the mainspring and precise adjustment to allow the jump at exactly the right moment. These were beautiful movements, but perhaps a little demanding. During this period IWC continually improved its movements, from Pallweber I to II to III. Subsequent jumping-hour designs patented by other companies had improvements intended to increase the strength of the movement's spring, which allowed the discs to jump more easily.

The next chapter

IWC's Pallweber pocket watches were distributed only from 1885 until the early 1890s. Although no other digital pocket watch was subsequently produced by IWC, other companies made digital pocket watches until around 1910. Many of these later developments provided additional torque by means of spring designs, changes to the wheel teeth or a second barrel.

Pocket watch with Pallweber III movement, 14-carat gold case, 1886

Nobody knows why IWC did not go on producing these digital pocket watches after the 1880s, given that they were easy to read and innovative, and often had special dials and cases. Although they could be a little demanding in operation, they were ahead of their time, at least until 2018. As part of its 150th Jubilee, in 2018 IWC successfully launched its Tribute to Pallweber wristwatch with a completely redesigned mechanism. A great concept deserves to live forever.