Lot 11

A. Lange & Söhne Glashütte B/Dresden, Movement No. 17289, Case No. 17289, Cal. 43, 54 mm, 134 g, circa 1884
An important Glashuette hunting case pocket watch - LEVER CHRONOMETER - with independent stoppable jumping seconds mechanism "seconde morte", manufactured in quality 1A, sold on August 26h, 1884 to Dr. B. Reis, Trier for 733,50 Marks, formerly with rating certificate of the observatory Leipzig - with Lange extract from the archives
Case: 18k gold, engraved monogram. Dial: enamel. Movm.: 3/4 plate movement, applied "seconde morte"-mechanism, large gold screw compensation balance.
According to Martin Huber "Die Lange-Liste", this is the only lever chronometer with a "seconde morte" mechanism ever manufactured by A. Lange & Söhne!
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.
This watch is recorded in "Die Lange-Liste" by Martin Huber, Munich 2000, p. 52 and 131