This hitherto unrecorded watch is an important addition to Lange?s known history. This watch is probably a prototype and incorporates several important technical features. Themovement is 1stQuality and of the type used in the early 1880s, the number of the watch confirms this date as between 1880 and 1885 and the sales ledger page showing this watch is dated March,1882. The rack and pinion micrometer regulator index is a type rarely seen and usually only found on their best chronometers. The rarest feature of this watch however, is that it is for two time zones and perhaps uniquely for a watch of this date has both pairs of hour and minute hands fitted to the center and yet each set is independently adjustable. The adjustment is facilitated by yet another very interesting mechanism ? to set the first time zone hands, a lever is engaged in the bezel; after the hands have been set, the winding crown must be depressed, which then returns the lever to its original position and the crown returns to winding mode. The second time zone hands are set from an arbor above the center wheel of the movement.
This watch was made at a time before the adoption of hourly time zones but also at a time when the subject of time zones was being addressed. It is probable that Lange made this watch with the thought of producing a commercial watch that would be of use to travelers when the time zone system was inevitably adopted. Time zones were first proposed for the entire world by Canada's Sir Sandford Fleming in 1876 as an appendage to the single 24-hour clock he proposed for the entire world (located at the center of the Earth and not linked to any surface meridian). In 1879 he specified that his universal day would begin at the anti-meridian of Greenwich (now called 180°),while conceding that hourly time zones might have some limited local use. He continued to advocate his system at subsequent international conferences. In October 1884, the International Meridian Conference did not adopt his time zones because they were not within its purview. The conference did adopt a universal day of 24 hours beginning at Greenwich midnight, but specified that it "shall not interfere with the use of local or standard time where desirable". Nevertheless,mostmajor countries had adopted hourly time zones by 1929.
Literature: For another example of the unusual micrometer index adjustment see: "A. Lange & Sohne, TheWatchmakers of Dresden", Reinhard Meis, AntiquorumEditions, 1999, p. 202, pl. 498. A movement of the same design is illustrated on p. 233, pl. 616.
Lange & Söhne. Ferdinand Adolph Lange was born on February 18, 1815. After studies at the Dresden technical college, he began an apprenticeship with Johann Friedrich Gutkaes, a prominent clockmaker of the town. This apprenticeship lasted five years, from 1830 to 1835.
After completing his studies with distinction in 1835, Lange remained another two years with Gutkaes, then set off on a journey to Paris in 1837. In that city, the horological center of France, Lange found a job with Winnerl, where he was soon made foreman. It is known that there he enrolled for lectures given by the famous physicist and astronomer, Arago.
Lange returned to Germany sometime around 1841, and soon became a partner in his master?s business. In 1842 he married his master?s daughter Antonia Gutkaes. That same year, Gutkaes was appointed clockmaker to the court. Lange?s energetic contribution brought about a quick and significant upswing in the Gutkaes & Lange business. It is during this period that Grand Prince Michael sent Lange a diamond pin to thank him for a complicated clock watch. For some time, Adolph Lange had intended to found a watch factory in Saxony. In 1845, he was able to make this dream concrete, opening a watch factory in Glashütte, near Dresden, under the name "A. Lange & Comp". From the beginning, Lange introduced innovations such as the use of a fly-wheel to drive the lathe, rather than the traditional, but now inadequate, bow. Hemade innovations in production, too, having decided not to imitate any other pocket watch. His lever watches of the best quality, rather than the cylinder watches which were thenmainly produced in Switzerland. Lange also resolved to put only fully adjusted watches on the market, for at the time, watches were commonly sold "in the gray", with all their errors, and subsequently regulated by the watchmaker before he resold them. Important collaborators at the time, who worked with Lange before setting out on their own, were Friedrich August Adolph Schneider, Julius Assmann, and Carl Moritz Grossmann. Adolph Lange?s sons Richard (1845-1932) and Emil (1849-1922) worked in the factory. When Adolph died unexpectedly in 1876, they respectively took on the technical and commercial direction of the company, and after Richard Lange?s retirement in 1887, it was Emil Lange who carried on the management of the firm alone. He put more emphasis on the decoration of the case than his father and brother had done. Emil Lange?s sons were Otto (1878-1971), Rudolph (1884-1954), and Gerhard Lange (1892-1969), came to the firm in 1920. Otto had rounded off his studies at the Le Locle school of watchmaking to broaden both his professional knowledge and his French. Rudolph learned watchmaking at the school in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Gerhard Lange studied economics in Leipzig and Freiburg after his commercial training. The two elder brothers jointly took over the management of the firm in May 1919, with Gerhard coming on a year later, in 1920. Rudolph?s son Walter (born 1924) fled what had become East Germany immediately after the war. Along with his brother Ferdinand Adolph, he revived their father?s company in the old watch and jewelry center of Pforzheim. However, business was not good, and Walter Lange soon turned to watch dealing in order to make a living. As soon as the Berlin wall fell in 1989, and even before German reunification, he re-established the Lange firm in Glashütte. On December 7, 1990, he registered the firmof " Lange Uhren GmbH " there, as well as the international trademark " Lange & Söhne ".