Excellent Swiss gold minute repeating lever hunter Circa 1901

Gold split-second chronograph with register
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An excellent Swiss 18K yellow gold minute repeating keyless hunting cased pocket watch, circa 1901. With split-second chronograph and 30-minute register. Accompanied by an Extract from the Archives. Sold on September 20th, 1905. A polished case, front cover engraved with initials ECC, the image of a lion and E SOMNO NON-EXCITA DORMIETEM LEONEM, two push buttons in the band for start/stop chronograph and the split-seconds functions, triple hinged, cuvette engraved JJC to Edward Chester Center, Sept. 1905.
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White enamel dial with painted radial Breguet numerals, outer 1/5th seconds tracks with five-minute/seconds Arabic red markers, subsidiary sunk dials for the seconds and the 30-minute register at 12 and blued steel Breguet hands. Nickel silver movement, Geneva striping decoration, 38 jewels, straight-line calibrated lever escapement, cut-bimetallic compensation balance with Breguet balance spring, swan-neck micrometre regulator, repeating on gongs by activating slide in the band. Dial, case, cuvette and movement signed.
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Diameter: 56 mm
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Thickness: 18 mm
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Signed: Patek, Philippe & Cie.  Genève
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In 1776, in Geneva, Moise Pouzait invented the independent dead seconds mechanism in which the movement has two trains, one conventional, and the second with a sweep-second hand which can be stopped without stopping the main train. Adrien Philippe’s independent dead seconds mechanism differs radically from the conventional one based on Pouzait’s design. Philippe moved the entire independent train over the centre bridge, allowing more room for the going train and the balance, which is larger, resulting in better timekeeping. There are fewer than two dozen recorded independent dead seconds watches by Patek Philippe, including the very first ones made by Patek and Czapek. This watch incorporates Adrien Philippe’s two patents concerning tandem winding: the first, for a free, or slipping, mainspring, patented on June 16, 1863, in France, and the second, for winding two mainsprings with one crown, Swiss patent No. 1017 of May 23, 1889.