18K Gold Quarter Repeater with Alarm Pocket Watch

Inventory Number: PW1903006

Made circa 1800, 59mm, signed Francois Henry A Douay on the dial, movement, and cuvette. Gilt full plate twin-barrel movement with hours, minutes, quarter repeating, and alarm functions. The repeating is activated by depressing the pendant, locked by a sliding lever in the band. The alarm is set by manually pushing the hand to the requested time.

Watchmaking Glossary

It is commonly thought that the repeating mechanism was discovered simultaneously around 1685, by two London watchmakers: Edward Barlow (1636-1716) and Daniel Quare (1649-1724). They both claimed to be the inventor and tried to protect their patent by applying for a royal patent. King James II (1633-1701), King of England, Ireland, and Scotland (1685-1688) decided in favor of Quare’s device. （Mainly because Quare’s device just needs to press one pendant while Barlow’s device needs two push-buttons to activate the mechanism.）

Quarter Repeating: strikes the hour and quarter-hour on demand, usually use low-tone(dong) sound to indicate the hour and a sequence of two tones ("ding-dong") to indicate the quarters.

Alarm: striking on a bell at a predetermined time, it is used when the users want to wake up at a particular time.