Lot 243

A. Lange & Söhne Glashütte B/Dresden, Movement No. 44366, Case No. 44366, 54 mm, 123 g, circa 1903
A Glashuette hunting case pocket watch with independent stoppable jumping seconds mechanism "seconde morte", sold on November 13th, 1903 to Karl Pfeiffer company in Teschen for 557 marks - with copy of the Lange & Söhne extract from the archives
Case: 18k gold, engraved monogram "Dr. HH". Dial: enamel. Movm.: 3/4 plate movement, applied "seconde morte"-mechanism, gold screw compensation balance.
The watch is listed in: Martin Huber, Die Lange Liste, p. 134.
Jumping seconds mechanism or "seconde morte"
Lange felt that the readability of the jumping auxiliary seconds was not satisfactory in a pocket watch, so he started following another course. By 1867 he had designed a mechanism which allowed an independent large central seconds hand to jump every second. The hand had a stop device but could not be reset to zero. 1877 his sons filed a patent for a slightly modified version of A. Lange's mechanism (no. 182). This seconds mechanism on a 3/4 plate created a precision watch which had the indication system of an astronomical pendulum clock but was portable.
Source: Reinhard Meis "A. Lange & Söhne" published by Callwey, Munich 1997, p. 238.

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