LeCoultre Minute Repeater Automaton Pocket Watch

Inventory number: PW1809040

Made in Switzerland circa 1890, 56mm, 18K red gold hunter case, with minute repeater and automaton functions. The animated scene activated by a slide, depicting two bellmen ring the bell, and an angel holding a bell. Generally, it’s more common to see two automata in this kind of scene, three-automata scene is comparatively rare.

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".