Ekegrén Minute Repeater Pocket Watch Made for Edwin Barbour

Inventory number: PW1809043

Circa 1880, 56mm. 18K gold hunter case with decorated engraving. With a minute repeater, jumping seconds functions. The numerals were replaced by the name “EDWIN BARBOUR”, suggested that this watch may belong to American actor Edwin Wilbur Barbour who passed away in Philadelphia in 1914. The watchmaker Henri Robert Ekegrén (1823-1896) was a renowned Danish clock, chronometer maker, and watchmaker to the King of Denmark.

Minute repeater

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

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".