Single Barrel Minute Repeater Pocket Watch

Inventory number: PW1809045

Made in Switzerland circa 1890, 55mm. 18K gold hunter case. Going barrel with single train movement, minute repeater activated by a push-piece rather than a slide. (Generally, minute repeater movement has two barrels and two train and activated by slide.)

Minute repeater

Thomas Mudge has traditionally been credited with the invention of this complication, circa 1750.

But we know now that the first mechanisms to precisely indicate the number of minutes elapsed appeared in the early years of the 18th century (1700-1710), for the most part in southern Germany.  During the entire 18th century, watchmakers in Friedberg (a city in Germany) produced this kind of mechanism and exported to London, in particular.

The minute repeater works like the quarter repeater, with the addition that, after the hours and a quarter hours are sounded, the number of minutes since the last quarter-hour is sounded. This requires three different sounds to distinguish hours, quarters, and minutes. Often the hours are signaled by a low tone, the quarters are signaled by a sequence of two tones ("ding-dong"), and the minutes by a high tone.

For example, if the time is 2:49 then the minute repeater will sound 2 low tones representing 2 hours, 3 sequence tones representing 45 minutes, and 4 high tones representing 4 minutes: "dong, dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding, ding, ding, ding".