French 18 carat gold lever watch with seconde morte Circa 1900

Gold hunting cased pocket watch
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A hunting cased pocket watch with seconde morte, which was probably the former property of an aristocratic family, made by Breguet Neveu et Compagnie in Paris, France, circa 1900. The numbered case, which was crafted from 18 carat gold, has a monogram on the front lid with the noble coat of arms of the Rothschild family and the inscription Souvenir Reconnaissant on the inside, a plain back lid and numbered cuvette. The white enamel dial has Roman hours, an outer minute track with Arabic five minute numerals and blued steel hands. The movement has a very fine precision lever escapement, independent jumping seconds or seconde morte and tandem winding.
The cuvette is signed.
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Diameter: 51.5 mm
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Weight: 112 g
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Signed: Breguet
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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.