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pre internet long distance telephone communication.

cvalue13
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Foo2rama Foo2rama
Still useful as minute 4-6 costs the same as the first 3. Also the ch age in the US was mid 60’s or so? About the same time it stopped appearing on chronos.

Also let’s look at watches that have it vs date vs if the have US MFG codes on the movements.

sure, and you might also contact the manufacturers and ask whether they did or did not make country-specific dials for the Americas (regardless of movement code).

But, if you’ve got that person on the line, you could instead just ask them about the 3-minute marks.

I’ll save you the time (that you weren’t going to spend anyway) and say that brochures from these companies for the American market still showed these watches with the 3.6.9 marks - if they made concurrent variants without these marks at all, they weren’t marketing them consistently (if at all), and I would expect not shipping them consistently (if at all)
 
Foo2rama
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@cvalue13

I know you know I respect you and your knowledge.

But agree to disagree on this.
 
cvalue13
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SkunkPrince SkunkPrince
I don't know about you, but I'm not 150 years old. Yanking stories out of your butt to make you believe some story or another is not useful.

The documentation is out there, somewhere. I thought it was in the other post we beat to death, or perhaps not.
.

no clue what you’re uptight about

I spent weeks research this, and came to various conclusions I believe plausible.

SkunkPrince SkunkPrince
let's just appreciate it for what it is, and some day we'll know for sure.

That day will come when someone, apparently not you, gets out of their armchair and contributes more than their thumb movements

I gave it a shot, and found it rewarding
 
sheepdoll
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@cvalue13 at least this discussion is on topic in this thread.

For those interested here are the back sides of the movements in the first post.
IMG_3334.png

Only the one movement seems to have an import code.

What ever the case, I think I have learned something today.

"perfect time for boiling an egg is 8 minutes and 40 seconds"
-j
 
cvalue13
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sheepdoll sheepdoll
So if these marks are intended for the European market, telephone billing, that might make sense. I checked the 5 watches in the top photograph in this thread. 4 of them do not have import stamps on the balance bridge.

Personally, I doubt manufacturers operated to make different dials for the different markets, or did so with any consistency. A few reasons:

First, as mentioned above, US-focused marketing materials from manufacturers would still show some models with these 3.6.9 marks

Second, other types of dial markings, such as “Swiss Made” or “chronometré” across dials from any number of jurisdictions, to me, goes to show that dial designs were both finicky and also pretty one-size-fits-all a lot of the time
 
SkunkPrince
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cvalue13 cvalue13
no clue what you’re uptight about

I spent weeks research this, and came to various conclusions I believe plausible.



That day will come when someone, apparently not you, gets out of their armchair and contributes more than their thumb movements

I gave it a shot, and found it rewarding
Weeks! Oh my goodness!

Despite your condescention, I do not claim to have all of the answers. This subject has been beaten to death multiple times, and congratulations for you thinking you are right with no documentary evidence to back you up.

No documentation, whatever.

And your horse.

Done with this and you. I shan't comment anymore.
 
cvalue13
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SkunkPrince SkunkPrince
Despite your condescention, I do not claim to have all of the answers.

Not commenting, but still reading: it’s you that came to the table with the “Yanking stories out of your butt to make you believe some story or another is not useful.”

I’ve said all along: there’s no documentary evidence to back up any view, and so we’re left only to inference, deduction, reason, and our good looks

SkunkPrince SkunkPrince
And your horse.

Once a person has graced the cover of Western Mule Magazine, he really can’t be seen on a horse after that

9214AFEA-7ADB-4D79-8209-41D90988EB50.jpeg




 
sheepdoll
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I was looking to see if I could find my copy of de Carle, which seems to have gone missing. (I may have accidentally donated a box of valuable books to the Salvation Army a decade or more ago, when I emptied a storage unit.) I did however find on bookshelf a nice pretty picture book by Gerd-R Lang/Reinhart Meis. Tr. Dr E Force 1993 ISBN 0-88740-502-9

On page 25 the the graphic from the pamphlet https://omegaforums.net/threads/3-minute-marks-on-pilot’s-chronographs-partially-debunking-myths-and-some-dead-reckoning.138286/page-3#post-1881703 in the long thread repeats the statement that "For a long time it was customary for the post office to charge telephone feed for units of three minutes, especially for calls outside the country."
Since in the US the post office never did calls, I would hypothesize in my ignorance that this 'feature,' was used for calls from Europe to other countries.
It also goes on to state, that once regulation changed, this feature fell out of use.
Curiously when I looked up the ISBN, wiki seems to use this book a reference.

I suspect (Like I did when I wrote my redialing program) that it was monkey see and monkey do, where these marks simply continued to be produced, even after the use was forgotten. Or a retro look was intended.

I'd call the rag and bone man, but he has long since left...

-j
Edit: removed unrelated late night musings that had nothing to do with the subject at hand.
Edited:
 
Foo2rama
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@sheepdoll

it’s one thing to present information, it’s another to be a dick about it.
 
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