WatchTime - August 2012

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Patek Philippe Reference 5204
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SPLIT-SECONDS CHRONOGRAPHS
Dubey & Schaldenbrand’s Index Mobile Winnerl’s pocketwatch No. 495 (circa 1840).
The flyback pusher is on the pendant.
Chronographs with a split-seconds or
“catch-up” hand (French: rattrapante) are
much rarer and more expensive than
“ordinary” chronographs. In a split-seconds
chronograph, the second elapsedseconds
hand can be stopped as often as
desired and independently of its twin,
enabling the user to measure intermediate
times. After each intermediate interval’s
duration has been read, the stopped
hand can be restarted and it speedily
catches up with its counterpart (i.e., the
chronograph’s primary elapsed-seconds
hand). Both hands can also be simultaneously
returned to the zero position. All
this requires an additional, costly mechanism,
so the price of a rattrapante watch
is generally about 50 percent higher than
that of an ordinary chronograph.
The first rattrapante dates from 1827,
when Louis-Frédéric Perrelet and his son
were issued a patent for a split-seconds
mechanism. Perrelet père et fils had connected
two seconds hands at a single
point of contact. The final arrangement is
credited to the Austrian watchmaker
Joseph Thaddäus Winnerl, who moved to
Paris in 1829 and two years later developed
the mono-rattrapante, which had a
catch-up mechanism equipped with only
one hand. A version with two seconds
hands followed in 1838. A return-to-zero
mechanism had not yet been invented.
56 WatchTime August 2012
Genuine split-seconds chronographs
in pocketwatches first appeared in 1883.
In 1921, Ralco SA, a sub-brand of Movado
in La Chaux-de-Fonds, unveiled what was
probably the world’s first split-seconds
chronograph in wristwatch form. Luxury
brands including Patek Philippe followed
suit several years later. The complex and
laborious task of manufacturing a rattrapante,
along with the consequent high
price, dissuaded experienced ébauche
manufacturers from producing split-seconds
versions of common calibers. The
first to do so was Valjoux, the industry
leader, in movements measuring 39.3
mm in diameter (17 2/3 lignes). Smaller
14-ligne models were available from
Venus’s Caliber 185 in a
Record watch (ca. 1950)
Bovet’s Mono-Rattrapante
Venus, which made Caliber 179 (with
elapsed-minute counter, 7.2 mm tall),
Caliber 185 (with counters for elapsed
minutes and elapsed hours, 8.55 mm tall),
Caliber 189 (identical to Caliber 185, but
with a pointer date display, 8.55 mm tall)
and Caliber 190 (identical to Caliber 189,
but including a moon-phase display, 8.55
mm tall). None of these calibers achieved
widespread popularity. Nor did Bovet’s
Mono-Rattrapante, which debuted in
1936, or Dubey & Schaldenbrand’s comparatively
simple index-mobile construction
(starting in 1946), in which a slender
coiled spring, visible above the dial,
caused the split-seconds hand to jump
back.
It wasn’t until 1988, when the mechanical
renaissance was underway, that
there was a noteworthy breakthrough.
That’s when Frédéric Piguet and Blancpain
launched the caliber duo 1181
(hand-wound) and 1186 (automatic). In
1992, Chronoswiss, IWC and Ulysse
Nardin each upgraded Caliber Valjoux
7750 with a split-seconds mechanism,
and Breguet launched the 533 NT, based
on a Lémania mechanism. A. Lange &
Söhne introduced the Double Split (Caliber
L001.1) in 2004: this was the world’s
first chronograph with split hands for
both the elapsed seconds and the
elapsed minutes.