WatchTime - August 2012

sales of luxury watches, especially in the United States, forced a
change in ownership of the company. The brothers Charles and
Jean Stern, owners of the Fabrique de Cadrans Stern Frères dial
factory, who had a long and close business relationship with
Patek Philippe, purchased the majority of the shares in the company
in 1932. They hired as managing director Jean Pfister, director
of the Geneva subsidiary of Tavannes Watch. The Sterns
and Pfister decided that Patek Philippe should develop and produce
its own in-house calibers. The decision, which would have
far-reaching consequences, was initially limited to classic handwound
movements in either tonneau or round cases. Patek
Philippe’s top brass wasn’t quite ready to begin making their
own base movement for chronographs. Nor was there a need to.
Time-tested, precise and reliable hand-wound chronograph calibers
were readily available from Valjoux SA, like the 13-ligne,
5.85-mm-high column-wheel caliber 23VZ, which was
launched in 1916.
This movement underwent a thorough reworking and upgrading
in accordance with the traditional philosophy of Patek
Philippe, whose watchmakers used separate cocks to bear the
escape wheel, the fourth wheel and the driving wheel. They also
added a swan’s neck fine adjustment mechanism to the regulator’s
pointer, gave an unusual shape to the chronograph bridge,
and added the typical cover to the column wheel. They did the
WHAT BEGAN IN 2009 WITH
A MANUAL-WIND CHRONO BASE
HAS CULMINATED IN THE
496-COMPONENT CHR 29-535 PS Q.
laborious work of completely redesigning the coupling yoke and
giving it a bearing concentric with the staff of the fourth wheel,
a solution already used in early Piguet calibers. This movement,
which was hand-wound, combined a perpetual calendar with
the split-seconds chronograph for the first time. It appeared in
the legendary Reference 130, completed on Sept. 8, 1934. (The
new owners also introduced Patek’s system of identifying watch
models by reference number, beginning the series with the number
“96.”) The 13-ligne movement, designated by number
198.393, came in a 34-mm diameter case, the standard size for
that era. This extraordinary timepiece was sold on Feb. 14,
1938. Patek’s archives show that the split-seconds movement
(without the escapement) cost approximately 600 Swiss francs.
The painstakingly finished set of parts for the escapement cost
124 francs. The perpetual calendar added 240 francs and the assembling
another 250 francs. Patek Philippe manufactured a total
of three watches of this type.
Patek Philippe produced a number of split-second chronographs
bearing reference number 1436. The exact number of
split-second chronographs produced in the decades after the
Sterns took over the company is not known. It is certain, how-
SPECS
PATEK PHILIPPE SPLIT-SECONDS CHRONO-
GRAPH WITH PERPETUAL CALENDAR
Manufacturer: Patek Philippe, Chemin
du Pont-du-Centenaire 141, CH-1228,
Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland
Reference number: 5204
Functions: Hours, minutes, small seconds,
column-wheel chronograph with elapsedseconds
hand and jumping counter for
up to 30 elapsed minutes; split-seconds
function triggered by a button in the
crown; perpetual calendar with day,
month, leap-year cycle and day/night
display in windows and date display in
subdial at 6 o’clock, ultra-precise
moon-phase display
Movement: Hand-wound caliber CHR
29-535 PS Q; diameter = 32 mm,
height = 8.7 mm (including 1.65 mm for
the perpetual calendar and 1.7 mm for
the split-seconds mechanism); 496
individual parts (including 182 for the
perpetual calendar and 42 for the
split-seconds mechanism with isolator),
34 jewels, 65-hour power reserve,
Gyromax balance with a frequency of
28,800 vph, Breguet hairspring
Case: 950 platinum, sapphire crystal;
the solid platinum back can be removed
and a threaded transparent back with a
sapphire crystal inserted in its place;
water resistant to 30 meters; Top
Wesselton diamond between the lower
pair of lugs; comes with corrector stylus
made of ebony and 18k white gold
Strap and clasp: Matte, black hand-sewn
alligator strap; folding clasp made of 950
platinum
Dimensions: Diameter = 40 mm,
height = 14.19 mm
Price: $317,500
ever, that the total quantity was fewer than 200 watches and
thus significantly lower than the number of wristwatch chronographs
with perpetual calendars produced during this same period.
An impressive 281 examples of the perpetual calendar
watch Reference 1518 were built between 1941 and 1954.
PARTLY BECAUSE OF THE appearance on the market of the
first automatic chronographs in 1969, Valjoux terminated production
of its hand-wound chronograph caliber 23 VZ in 1974.
The stock of ébauches nonetheless remained large enough to
August 2012 WatchTime 57