# I May Be Wrong But



## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

this is just a plain old Landeron 4750 based watch that someone has drilled a couple of holes in the case so that it can run of an external battery.

http://cgi.ebay.co.u...3#ht_790wt_1163

Yesterday it was on eBay at Â£10,315 

I then had a couple of postings on my Electric Watch FB page (http://www.facebook....lectric.Watches) plus an email....from the owner. I explained politely that there is nothing special about this watch and its a shame someone has done this.

The price on eBay has now been reduced to Â£1,932 

So we just need the decimal place to move one more to the left, and then divide the result by about 3 and we might be getting close to its true worth. :lol:. If I was going to buy this watch (which I'm not), I'd immediately re-case it....which sort of defeats the purpose since the seller is describing this case as "experimental" .

Oh well, good luck to him...and buyers beware.


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## PhilM (Nov 5, 2004)

That's just plain wrong, surely everyone can see that he's just drilled the 2 holes and that its not the bloody holy grail that he says it is ... :hammer:


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## mel (Dec 6, 2006)

The two external "experimental" holes may have been drilled by a watchmaker - - who knows - - just to keep this movement running using a separate cell of some kind. Maybe he used it as a desk clock? 

BUT the story is a tad inconsistent - - .. > - - even within itself? :yahoo: :yahoo:


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## mel (Dec 6, 2006)

The two external "experimental" holes may have been drilled by a watchmaker - - who knows - - just to keep this movement running using a separate cell of some kind. Maybe he used it as a desk clock? 

BUT the story is a tad inconsistent - - .. > - - even within itself? :yahoo: :yahoo:


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## tixntox (Jul 17, 2009)

Echo! Echo!


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

I almost forgot....postage to UK Â£155


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## harryblakes7 (Oct 1, 2010)

And then there is Import excise duty................

Nice dial though.............. shall i offer him Â£75? And ask for free postage?


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## FuriousPig (Jun 17, 2009)

On the upside, if he is successful, you can always dig out the dremel & get to work on those spare cases.


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## Alex11 (Jun 8, 2012)

He's ended it as it's no longer available. Bloody hope no one actually bought the thing...


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## martinus_scriblerus (Sep 29, 2008)

The seller is also a complete asshole. I have been corresponding with him and his ignorance is only matched by his arrogance. In Hamlet's words, "how absolute the knave is".

I would truly recommend not dealing with this guy on anything. I don't normally "flame" anyone, but this guy takes the cake.


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## Jeremy Fisher (Jan 28, 2012)

Had a look at some of the stuff he is selling, reminds me a lot of Del Boy.


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## Rotundus (May 7, 2012)

not often you see "complete asshole" and a quote from hamlet in the same post.

well done sir - "how long hast thou been a gravemaker?"

btw, i've got a couple of timex and a pretty full toolbox if anyone fancies spending a few hundred quid :tongue2:


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## martinus_scriblerus (Sep 29, 2008)

Rotundus said:


> not often you see "complete asshole" and a quote from hamlet in the same post.


Just trying to cater to all audiences.


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

Silver Hawk said:


> So we just need the decimal place to move one more to the left, and then divide the result by about 3 and we might be getting close to its true worth. :lol:. If I was going to buy this watch (which I'm not), I'd immediately re-case it....which sort of defeats the purpose since the seller is describing this case as "experimental" .
> 
> Oh well, good luck to him...and buyers beware.


Well, the decimal place did move to the left and it still didn't sell...and then all 12 got put up for sale in a BIN auction with Make An Offer...I made an offer and it was declined. Finally, the box of 12 was put up in a regular auction and, with some very kind help from Harleymanstan (Jarett) and Martinus Scriblerus (Dave), I won...and for a lot less that I initially offered :yes: .

They turned up yesterday. They certainly are a strange bunch. The coil in each watch is stamped with a number, with the highest being 24, so maybe there were two boxes of 12 at some point. The case is also chromed brass --- all my other Landeron 4750 based watches are either gold plated or all stainless steel. The electrical contacts show no arcing or carbon build-up, so these movements have not been used very much. The chrome cases are perfect and no strap has ever been fitted to these lugs.

The date on the box is July 1962 which is a little late if these were prototype watches. The BHI has an article in Nov 1960 that describes how to service the "new Swiss electric watch" (Landeron 4750) and it also mentions the UK distributors, Avia.

So what were they for :huh:? And what should I do with them :huh:?














































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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)




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## Kutusov (Apr 19, 2010)

Silver Hawk said:


> And what should I do with them :huh:?


I probably wouldn't mind one... 

Sorry for my ignorance when it comes to electric watches but those wires sticking out... are they supposed to be like that?

Why, oh why don't I read the whole thing for once?


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## FuriousPig (Jun 17, 2009)

I think it's safe to say, that's a unique find in the world of electric watches.


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

An update. :yes:

The external wires on these are a little more complicated than I first thought and are not straightforward power leads. The red lead that goes through a hole in the battery hatch connects to a dummy battery and does serve as the -ve terminal. However, the yellow lead that goes through the case is not the +ve, but instead also connects to the -ve but on the other side of the points etc, so is for measuring something. The case acts as the +ve.





































Time to get David Read's views on these watches and their wiring; he is an internet colleague of mine who has been involved in electrical horology for many, many years longer that I. These are his comments (I'll be testing you on this later ):

The purpose of the alterations made to your batch of Landerons can be very quickly narrowed down because unless the wire through the battery hatch is connected to zero volts and the case to a suitable positive potential, the watch will not run and no purposes can be served. Therefore, as you have already concluded, that leaves only the remaining yellow wire to serve as some sort of output. I was interested that yellow is used for the output wire because that is very often selected in electronics as the colour code for an output signal.

Anyway, I have carried out a simple experiment as illustrated in the attached image (below). I have used a 1970s Greiner watch tester to supply power to a NOS Rotary L4750, measure its consumption and display its rate. You can see that it is consuming 15 micro amps.	To measure the rate of the watch I have set the Greiner to calculate an average result over repeated measuring cycles of 12 seconds. The result is -6 seconds in 24 hours in on position.

A storage 'scope is connected to the yellow wire and shows us that pulses of 5Hz are emitted. This is to be expected because the frequency of an 18000 bph balance is 2.5 Hz. However, because it is impulsed on each vibration, the pulse frequency is 5Hz as displayed by the 'scope. The pulse width is about 10 ms and can itself can be examined for quality of of the contact surface by altering the time/division chosen for the display. A poor contact will be revealed by lots of fuzzy lines rather than clean edges. A long term test would reveal how long it took an initially clean contact to become poor. As you know, the purpose of the diode across the coil is to provide a path for the voltage generated by the collapsing magnetic field on switch off. If not present the potential involved will find a path by sparking which will corrode the contacts.

So what's the purpose of this batch of 12 watches? With the case backs in place and dummy cells made up to take in the negative supply , my view is that they can only have been modified in order to carry out out longish term evaluation for some purpose using the same method as i have just carried out. I don't mean prototype evaluation; that would all have been done by ESA in Switzerland before release. Ebauches S.A. made the 4750 available to their customers (Swiss watchmakers) via their Landeron division in April 1960. Time quickly passes and it wasn't until December of that year that an announcement appeared in the Watchmaker and Jeweller under the title of The First Swiss Electric Watch. This covered Avia's release and it was sufficiently novel to be in an 18ct gold case as in my accumulator example. It would have been well into 1961 before significant sales built up. I don't know what happened with respect to distribution in the USA but perhaps some batches were sent with unbranded dials for independent evaluation by Wittnauer so that they would be confident in whatever claims they would make for their release on a market that had seen electric wristwatches for rather a long time. I agree that the postmark on your the box seems late but it is often quite a while (even years) before very small initial sales (say in Switzerland) would build up to full production and large worldwide sales. Also, I don't think that that particular posting is an indication of the date that the watches were received in the USA. It seem quite likely that after a long term test, the wires were trimmed off the watches and they were posted within the USA. *Perhaps they were being returned from a standards lab. to the marketing department of Wittnaeur together with a report*.

As the postmark on the box indicate going from one US address to another US address, I think his *bolded* sentence above is very plausible. And his set-up below...must get myself an oscilloscope:


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