# Movement With 2 Time Zones



## Mikrolisk (Jan 23, 2008)

Hi again,

here is an interesting movement of an old captains watch. Alas the original watch case has gone, at its place there is a ... well, scrub brass case...

and it keeps the dirt outside. This movement was made in the swiss in about 1850 and sold by guy like M.I.Tobias, London/Liverpool (not the Tobias

with the real good watches), but now without the original case it remains anonymous.

The way of this watch is somehow curious: Because of the words on the balance cock (fast/slow) this must be a watch that is swiss made and sold in

England. But then it found its way to Hawaii, from where it came to me to germany. Way cool!










Well, first the dial and the hands: It is a metal (brass?) dial with blue steel hands on two inner dials (top left, top right), a big center second hand and a

synchronous running small second hand at 6 o'clock. The dial has engravings of a boat, houses, a castle and landscape. In earlier days there were

gold roman hour numbers on the small dials.










The movement is quite interesting and unusual to other watches (the reason why I bought it). It is first a swiss bridge movement, key-wound and key-set,

of course with two square-ends to set the time on each dial and it has 15 jewels. Then there's a parachute shock proof system (as from Breguet) - but not

in the original version, because there is a little screw right beside the balance end stone. This screw fixes the long arm and so the end stone, which

cannot move freely to make this shock absorber system work. You can see this in the next detail image of the escapement:










Also you will see here the temperature compensation curve, also invented by Breguet, on the regulator. This curve is made out of bimetal and wides

or narrows the regulator comb (is this the name for it?) which holds the hair spring. And you can see here the lever escapement (side-lever) with hidden pallets.

Of course, a real captains watch needs to be stopped and started with a slider/button on the case (to set the exact time), but without a real fitting case this

slider was fixed in start position. On this detail image you can see the pin or hook on the top, right side of the balance cock - which can stop the balance wheel.

The movement is running and keeping good time inside this ugly case:










Regards,

Andreas


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