Swiss gunmetal digital keyless pocket watch Circa 1930

Gunmetal lever watch
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A Swiss gunmetal hunting cased keyless pocket watch with jumping hours and minutes made for the Chinese market by Cortébert Watch Co., circa 1930. The movement with a lever escapement and engraved Patent Pallweber Breveté S.G.D.G. Silvered dial with apertures for digital display of the jumping hours and minutes, and subsidiary seconds at 6 o’clock, fine monochrome enamel floral and foliage decoration on the right and left. A hinged plain case. Movement signed and numbered.
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Diameter: 53 mm
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Signed: Cortébert Watch Co. 
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In 1790, Switzerland, Abraham-Louis Juillard opened a small watch shop in the village of Cortébert between Saint Imier and Bienne. Although the Cortébert brand name was not registered until 1855, using the bottony cross as logo, this year is commonly used as the date of founding.
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Cortébert was a premium watch brand that manufactured its own movements and supplied them to other brands such as Rolex. 
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The company became well known for its railroad watches. They supplied both the Turkish and the Italian railroad companies. In 1927, at Mussolini’s request, Cortébert started distributing watches in Italy under the brand name Perseo, as fascist Italy rejected foreign brand names. It is under this name that their timepieces were used by the Italian railway company.
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By 1944, Cortébert had a lineup of 20 different calibers.
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When the quartz crisis hit the watchmaking industry in the 1970s, the majority of prestige brands ceased production, including Cortébert. Their representatives in Italy bought the Perseo brand name and continue today as an independent company.
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Josef Pallweber was an Austrian engineer from Salzburg. His registered residence changed several times within the German Empire, from Furtwangen via Frankfurt am Main to Mannheim. The company name, Josef Pallweber & Sohn, was also known in Austria. He is considered the inventor of watches with jumping numerals, also called Pallweber watches, for which he filed a patent in Salzburg in 1883 at age 25.
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Pallweber invented the digital time display showing jump hours and minutes for pocket watches with numbers on rotating discs next to the classic hands. Digits indicating the correct hour and minutes were revealed through two apertures on the dial, the seconds were still shown through a small hand on a subsidiary dial.
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In the late 19th century, many watch manufacturers had the so-called jump hour watches in their range, among them renowned makers such as A. Lange & Söhne in Glashütte, Germany. However, one of the most prolific producers of this type of watch was the International Watch Company Schaffhausen (IWC).
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IWC brought digital pocket watches to the market based on Pallweber’s patent from approximately 1885 to 1887. Within their production, IWC improved the Pallweber construction twice through small changes in the gears, hence the designations Pallweber I, Pallweber II and Pallweber III. The company produced around 20.000 Pallweber pocket watches. Reportedly, 14.940 examples were made as the calibre 42, Pallweber III. After this successful period, which helped to establish IWC as a serious brand, the interest in these watches waned at the beginning of the 20th century. To mark the 150th anniversary of IWC, the ‘Tribute to Pallweber’ edition was released in 2018. A wristwatch made in limited numbers and priced from $ 30.000.
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After granting the license to IWC, Josef Pallweber subsequently granted his mechanism to display the time in a digital format to other Swiss watch companies, such as Cortébert and Gédéon Thommen, for the French and Belgian markets.
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In 2010, the trademark rights of the name Josef Pallweber were acquired by the Swiss Marc Baltensweiler, who presented clearly and succinctly designed models with jumping hours under the motto ‘Time to be different’.