Important collector's watches, wristw...

Hotel Richemond, Geneva, Apr 13, 2002

LOT 48

Louis Berthoud, Paris, No 44, completed on Pluviose 24, year IX (February 13, 1801), sold to Citoyen Delambre, Administrator of the Board of Longitudes, for the Account of the Citoyen Ministre de l?Intérieur, to be sent to Egypt. Resold to the Department of the Marine on May 10, 1817, for the Senegal expedition and delivered to Vice Admiral Rosily, after examination by Monsieur Burkhard, Director of the Ecole Militaire Observatory. Extremely fine and almost certainly unique silver pocket chronometer with 24-hour regulator dial.

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Sold: CHF 179,500

C. Two-body, ?double fond? (as described by the maker), made by Joly, stamped with French guarantee marks. D. White flat enamel, made by Lucard, 24-hour Arabic chapter set at the top, outer minute ring with five-minute Arabic figures, subsidiary seconds. Blued steel ?double swell? hands. M. 55 mm, gilt brass, full plate, cylindrical pillars, fusee and chain, pivoted detent chronometer escapement of Louis Berthoud design, three-arm bimetallic compensation balance with three temperature adjustment wedged weights with three gold and platinum screws each, free-sprung blued steel helical balance spring, detent banking to an eccentric post of adjustable screw with tension from a long delicate spring, escapement jeweled, case locking block at 4 o?clock. Signed on dial and movement. Diam. 68 mm.


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Grading System
Grade:
Case: 3

Good
Movement: 3*

Good

Overhaul recommended, at buyer's expense
Dial: 3-01

Good

HANDS Original

Notes

Provenance: Marryat Collection. It appears that this is the only Berthoud chronometer with a 24-hour regulator dial. The first French marine chronometers were large, bulky, and delicate instruments. They were made by such pioneers as Pierre Le Roy and Ferdinand Berthoud. Louis Berthoud, seeing the disadvantages of such large machines, concentrated his efforts on designing a small, portable, rigid and reliable Marine Watch. The first trial, in 1787, was quite successful. Over the next five years Berthoud improved and further developed his ideas and on November 23, 1792 described them for the first time publicly in a letter addressed to the Minister of the Marine, in which he explained the advantages of ?petites montres à longitude? over the large ones produced up to then. Six months prior to that in a sealed letter deposited at the Academy he had described the details of his new timekeepers. He was the first in France to produce reliable deck chronometers. They were superbly made machines, with the best possible finish. It took considerable time to complete one, which is why they were costly and he did not make many. No wonder they have become collector?s objects for the best French horological experts. Eventually, however, because of the difficulty of regulating pocket chronometers in various positions, Berthoud chose to give them gimbal mountings, like that of his watch No. 19. After 1795, he generally fitted his marine watches in tabatière-type cases, in which gimbals could be more easily mounted, only making pocket chronometers very rarely. It is interesting to note that in 1812 Berthoud?s pupil Henri Motel made a watch which also bore the number 44. This watch employed friction rollers, which Berthoud had stopped using by 1798, but which were frequently employed by his students. No. 140, also made by Motel, also used friction rollers. Berthoud, incidentally, deplored the use of his numbers by his pupils, predicting that one day ?it will prove to be very annoying for me.? Jean-Claude Sabrier, ?Longitude at Sea in the Time of Louis Berthoud and Henri Motel?, Antiquorum Editions, 1993.