Extremely rare rose gold half-hunting cased chronograph Circa 1910

Rose gold half hunter chronograph by A. Lange & Söhne
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An extremely rare 18 carat rose gold half-hunting cased quality 1A lever chronograph Glashütte pocket watch with 30-minute counter, circa 1910. Sold on March 3rd, 1910 to the Schwarz & Steiner company in Vienna for 732 Marks. ¾ Plate movement, lever escapement,  gold screw compensation balance. White enamel dial with Arabic numerals, subsidiary seconds at 6 o’clock and a 30-minute counter at 12. Plain case with radial blue Arabic hours on the front. Dial signed, case numbered, movement signed and numbered, case and movement with matching numbers. Comes with an Extract from the Archives and formerly with the rating certificate of the Observatory Leipzig.
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Diameter: 54 mm
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Weight: 124 g
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Signed: A. Lange & Söhne Glashütte i/Sa
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In the opinion of the watch and clock museum in Glashütte, this timepiece with such an unusual grading system on the dial could be “a tailor-made watch made to order for a lead engineer or a factory owner who wanted to work out from tests how much time a worker needed to produce one piece, i.e., how many pieced could be produced per hour. The scales also show km per hour for a distance of 1,000 m. The highest value on the scale is set at 150 km per hour.” As the Lange records list know other chronographs with such a tachymeter scale, this is, without a doubt, a rare collector’s piece, which came with a hefty price tag even in its time: The tailor-made dial at 20 marks cost as much as the issuing of the certificate by the observatory in Leipzig.
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Ferdinand Adolph Lange was the founder of A. Lange & Söhne. He was born in 1815 as the son of Johann Samuel Lange. Early in life, his parents separated and he was adopted by a foster family. Luckily this family offered him a chance at proper education and in 1829, he joined the Technical University of Dresden. Lange’s master was Christian Friedrich Gutkaes, the maker of the famous five-minute clock in the Dresden Opera House and the court watchmaker later on. Lange finished his apprenticeship with honours and went on to work with Gutkaes as his assistant for more than two years. In 1837, Lange decided he wanted to learn the watchmaking craft from the best of the time and this decision took him to Paris, Switzerland and England. He spent four years with the master watchmaker Winnerl, a student of Breguet, in Paris. Lange returned to Dresden in 1841 and took over his now father-in-law Gutkaes’ business in 1842. He had the ambition to bring prosperity to the once rich, now unfortunate Erzgebirge region, Glashütte, he wanted to build a watchmaking industry and create jobs. He received funding from the high council of Saxony and on December 7th, 1845, Ferdinand Adolph Lange founded A. Lange & Cie. He started with fifteen young men who were obliged to work with him for at least five years and following Lange encouraged his apprentices to found their own specialized firms in Switzerland. He set up a watchmaking cluster in the region along with his colleagues Julius Assmann, Adolf Schneider and Moritz Grossmann. At the time, there was a specialist for every part, producing individual pieces of the highest quality. Ferdinand Adolph developed numerous mechanisms, from the remontoir to dead-seconds and repeaters and he introduced the metric system to watchmaking. Eventually, it took Glashütte watchmaking 20 years to develop. After two successful decades and as the mayor of Glashütte Ferdinand Adolph Lange retired in 1868. He enjoyed his spacious house built adjacent to the factory, which today serves as the headquarters of the modern A. Lange & Söhne. He gave the reigns of his legacy to his sons Richard and Emil Lange, subsequently, the company’s name was changed from A. Lange & Cie to A. Lange & Söhne. Under their management A. Lange & Söhne expanded tremendously. Ferdinand Adolph Lange died in 1875.