74,750 CHF
A. Lange & Söhne, Glashütte B/Dresden, No. 28592, made in 1890, sold for 1342 DM. Extremely fine, 18K gold, keyless quarter-repeating first quality pocket watch with Lange’s patented dead-seconds chronograph. Five-body, massive, 113 grams, “Louis XV”, polished, gold hinged cuvette. White enamel, Arabic numerals, outer minute divisions with five-minute Arabic markers. Gold “Louis XV” hands. Notes The independent dead-seconds mechanism was invented by Moise Pouzait in Geneva in 1776. It had two trains with two power sources. Breguet devised a dead-seconds mechanism utilizing a single train, probably by the end of the 18th century. In 1867 Adolph Lange invented a very clever mechanism driving the dead-seconds also from a single going train by implementing one-second remontoire-like device see drawing. During a one-second interval enough energy is stored in the springs f1 and f2 to advance the wheel b to give enough momentum to the jump second pinion to advance the hand for one second. According to Meis, only three early watches were fitted with this system. The system was not patented until ten years later by Lange’s son Richard, German patent No. 182 of August 3, 1877. Lange produced only about twenty watches with a combination of his dead-seconds and quarter-repeating.
Auctioneer:
Antiquorum
Date:
2004-11-14
