Important Watches, Wristwatches and C...

Geneva, Hotel Des Bergues, Apr 12, 1997

LOT 199

"The Longitude Watch" Louis Audemars, Brassus, Swiss, No. 11734, specially made for the 1873 Universal Exhibition in Vienna. Extremely fine and unique 18K gold hunting cased, double face, moon phase astronomical keyless watch with perpetual calendar and two time zone subsidiary dial, specially designed to give the time by difference of longitude, for one of the 40 European cities selected on the outer ring.

CHF 80,000 - 100,000

Sold: CHF 174,000

C. Five body, massive, "bassine et filets", engineturned. D. White enamel on the front with small sunk symmetrical dials with Roman numerals, one for the time in Vienna (hairline), the other for the time of the city to be selected among the 40 city names recorded on the outer ring with their longitude East or West of Vienna. Blued steel "spade" hands. White enamel on the rear face with moon phase aperture, sunk subsidiary dials for clays of the week, the months of the leap year cycle and the date. Gold hands. M. 20"', frosted and gilt, full plate, 20 jewels, straight line lever escapement, cut bimetallic balance, Breguet balance spring. Signed both on the front and the back dials. In very good condition.


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Notes

With the development of the telegraphic transmissions and even more so that of the railway , it became essential to be able to work out the precise time throughout the network, in or der to publish the cor rect train timetable, determine the time for connections and avoid collisions. With a view to this, the principal impact of the 1898 Washington conference on the man-in-the street was the adoption, country by country, of a time-zone system based upon the world's new prime meridian - Greemvich - and this despite the fact that the time-zonz system, thought discussed, was not specifically recommended by the conference. However, Dowd' s ti me-zone system with oiehourdifferences between zones seemed to be the best possible compromise between Universal Time and Local time: no one had to keep his clock much more than 30 minutes different from local ti me, and yet the minute hands were all the same, only the our hands differing from zone to zone. Before the Washington conference, different attemps were made by watchmakers to supply travellers with watches able to give the time in the major cities they were likely to visit. The system developed for this watch, inspired by the one invented by Anquetin in France in 1856 (see lot No. 220), allowed travellers to know exactly the time of the city in which they were and to calculate the time of the city to which they were going.