eight-day watch
- Museum number
- 1973,1204.1
- Description
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ROLLED GOLD CASED EIGHT-DAY LEVER WATCH
Eight-day watch.
Club-tooth lever escapement; keyless winding.
Metal dial; black with white metal Arabic figures; subsidiary seconds.
Rolled gold open-face domed case.
- Production date
- 1905-1915
- Dimensions
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Diameter: 50.40 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
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Associated dates : 1912.
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Comment from Richard Good, Catalogue of Watches in the British Museum. Vol. V (Unpublished manuscript)
Made by Octava Watch Co.(1)
Granges, Switzerland, c. 1910
8 Day Watch with going barrel and club tooth lever escapement
Signature: The dial marked '8 DAY NON LUMINOUS MARK V.B.G. No. 1294'. The train plate marked 'OCTAVA WATCH CO SWITZERLAND 15 FIFTEEN JEWELS 2 TWO ADJUSTMENTS U.S.A.P. 816321'.
Case: Rolled gold open face case. In the back 'STAR' and 310603. On the back is a monogram 'SCA'. Inside the back cover 'ENGLISH MAKE THIS CASE GUARANTEED TO WEAR 10 YEARS 310603'and '11'. The inner back inscribed "Presented to S.C. Albon. For punctuality and Diligence. March 1912" and below in pin dots "by a JB (Alfred John Bourlet).(2)
Dial and Hands: Flat dial with the white ground left uncovered by overall black to be the numerals and markings. The dial badly chipped around its edge and repaired in places. Gold coloured hands of spade design painted red.
Movement:
Ebauche Marks: 973 under the dial, on the other side of the front plate 60775.
Frame: An idle wheel is at the centre of the movement and passes through the intermediate wheel, this idle wheel carries the minute hand. The idle centre wheel is driven by a pinion on the third wheel. There is one combined bridge for the barrel and intermediate wheel and another for the train. Cocks for the pallet and the balance, this latter cock engraved. Under and on the pallet cock is 73, under the barrel and train bridges and the balance cock is 973.
Barrel and Mainspring:
Recessed cover to the going barrel I diameter 18.1 mm., height 3.5 mm.
Mainspring height 3.2 mm., thickness 0.25 mm
Arbor: diameter 5.5 mm., snailed
Hooking: formed from the barrel wall.
Train: Brass wheels gilded one side with six crossings except for the steel escape wheel which has four.
Jewelled: from the third onwards, the jewels rubbed in, ruby endstones to the balance.
Escapement: Club tooth lever, straight line layout, short lever, double roller, impulse pin D shaped. Pallet stones exposed, flat on the acting faces. Escape wheel steel, teeth chamfered both sides. Pallet staff screwed in.
An equidistant locking escapement.
Number of teeth embraced 3½.
Balance: A split bimetallic balance, diameter 13.2 mm., thickness 0.65 mm. Blued-steel flat spiral spring with 17 turns and with a terminal curve.
Means of Regulation: Index on the balance registering against a divided scale with engraved 'F S' and 'A R'.
Train Counts and Beat Rate:
Great wheel (barrel) 90 teeth
Intermediate wheel 112 pinion 10
Centre wheel 80 (once hour)
Third wheel 105 a pinion of 8 and another of 20 - this latter drives the centre wheel and rotates in 15 minutes.
Fourth wheel 70 pinion 7 (rotates once minute)
Escape wheel 15 pinion 7
Beat rate 18,000
Motion work: cannon pinion 12
Minute wheel 36, minute pinion 10,
hour wheel 40
Winding System: Conventional positive set keyless work
Dimensions: Case diameter 50.3 mm., height 5.7 mm (over the glass)
Movement diameter 43.0 mm height 10.3 mm
Provenance: Bequeathed by Stanley Charles Albon Esq in 1973.
Notes
(1) The Octava Watch Co was apparently a subsidiary of the Adolphe Schild factory which was founded in 1896 at Granges, Switzerland. Octava watches were made from 1910 onwards.
(2) The person who bequeathed this watch is the subject of the inscription. With the watch are his indentures - he was apprenticed to Alfred John Bourlet on 19th April 1909.
- Location
- Not on display
- Condition
- Latest: 3 (Feb 1995)
- Acquisition date
- 1973
- Acquisition notes
- Presented to the museum together with Mr. Stanley Charles Albon's indentures of apprenticeship as a watch and clockmaker to Alfred John Bourlet.
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1973,1204.1
