Letter from the Publisher

LIKE A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT
In the 20th century, in the miniaturized form of
wristwatches, watches providing audible indications
of the time established themselves as one of the most
eloquent demonstrations of watchmaking know-how.
It takes exceptional skill to make this complex system of
“mechanical” memory, based on “feeler-spindles” picking
up the information from the hour, quarter-hour and minute
“snails”, and then passing it on to “gathering-pallets” that
raise the hammers. It takes an extremely sensitive musical
ear to adjust the gongs as one would a musical instrument,
especially in the case of a so-called “cathedral” chiming
Omega has the distinction
of introducing what may
be the world’s first minute-
repeater wristwatch. Created
by Louis Brandt in 1892, the
watch features a striking
mechanism that chimes on
demand the hours, quarterhours
and minutes.
mechanism that strikes on three or four gongs. There are
two main types of audible indication: striking “in passing”
or automatically (grand and small strike) and striking on
demand (repeater mechanisms). Grand strike (grande
sonnerie) means that the watch repeats the hours every
quarter-hour, and small strike (petite sonnerie) that it merely
signals either the full hours or the quarter-hours. Meanwhile,
a minute repeater mechanism is generally fitted with two
gongs: a low-pitched one for the hours, a high-pitched
one for the minutes, and the quarter-hours on alternating
high- and low-pitched tones.
Minute Repeaters and Sonneries 421 •