Recently I acquired a lot of stop/pocketwatches (read: about 50). I want to keep 5-10 of them so the rest has to go. Most of them are pretty straight forward but I have a hard time finding out what this is. Looks pretty early to me. No idea what movement is in there and I'm not overly enthousiastic to open it (had some bad experiences ) but perhaps somebody knows what it is based on this pics.
The R and A on the balance cock indicates retard and advance, so meant for a domestic market in Switzerland? France? Cylinder escapement. Appears to be a ten-minute timer based on the dial? Circa 1880? Pure guess work.
They time how long it takes for each player to make his move. I've seen these timers before but never used one. The simple crown of this watch and can like case suggest to me that it was once housed in a wooden casing with an extension that operated the crown. Just a WAG though. It could be an egg timer for all I know.
Heres an image of a Chess timer. " When a person makes a move he stops his clock and thus starts his opponents clock. The clocks countdown how much time each player has left to make all their moves before reaching the time limit. At the beginning of the game the clock of the player who has the white pieces is started. When the minute hand is pointing towards the 12 a small flag falls. In the picture above of the analogue clock the minute hand on the left clock has reached 12 and the flag has fallen. On the clock on the left the minute hand is just beginning to push the flag up. If a player has not made the specified number of moves when the flag falls he has lost the game on time unless the opponent has insufficient material to checkmate with. Then the game is drawn. Rates of Play There are various rates of play in use. The following indicates the different options available: Blitz has typical time limits of 5 minutes for each player for all of the moves. Rapidplay is played with typical time limits of 30 minutes for each player for all the moves. Local league chess has typical time controls of 35 moves in 75 minutes and then perhaps 15 or 20 minutes to finish the game. International chess has a standard time control of 40 moves in 2 hours and then an extra hour to reach move 60. After this, if the game is still in progress a quickplay finish decides the game. With the use of digital clocks it is common to play with an increment such as 2 12. This means that each person has 2 minutes to make their moves and on each move they make 12 seconds is added to the time they have remaining on the clock. Increments can also be used for longer games." http://www.chesscorner.com/tutorial/chess_clock/chess_clock.htm While the movement in question is similar in construction the dial is very different. No red flag for one thing.
Interesting. Thanks! I think this kind of timers are always mounted in a stand so I doubt mine is one.
It looks like it was intended to be mounted in some sort of stand, or perhaps a dash board or instrument panel.