French gold deadbeat center seconds watch Circa 1838

Gold open faced repeating cylinder watch 
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A French 18 carat yellow gold open faced quarter repeating pocket watch with independent deadbeat center seconds, circa 1838. The watch has a mechanical movement with a cylinder escapement and drop guard, repeating the quarter hours with two hammers on a gong. Its silvered guilloché dial features Roman hour numerals, an outer minute track, a center seconds hand, and a Breguet hand,  the hour hand is missing. The flat case has a guilloché reverse, gold cuvette and locking bolt on the band. It bears the hallmarks of the Bureau des départements, the oxhead and sphinx.
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Diameter: 56 mm
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Weight: 93 g
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Signed: No name
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The dome is missing.
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The seconde morte, also known as dead-beat seconds, is a complication of a mechanical movement in which the second hand moves every second. This is in contrast to the usual ‘running’ of the second hand. This complication is rare and was seen in the years before the quartz revolution, the 1970s and 1980s, but died a silent death because of the same quartz revolution. The reason for this was that the second hand moves per second in almost the same way as quartz watches, which ultimately also use a frequency of 1Hz. With that, the ‘running’ second hand became the distinction between mechanical and quartz watches. Incidentally, that external similarity only applies to the second hand jumping per second, the underlying mechanism of the dead seconds complication is of course of a completely different order.