French elegant precision lever chronometer watch Circa 1935

Gold open faced pocket watch by  L. Leroy & Co.
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An elegant French precision pocket lever chronometer watch, circa 1935, with original box and original Bulletin de 1ère Classe de l’Observatoire de Besançon of 06/02/1938. 18 carat pink gold polished case with a reeded band and numbered and signed gold dome. Two tone pink gilt engine turned dial with radial Roman numerals, auxiliary seconds and blued Breguet hands. Bridge movement, frosted, gilt, with observatory hallmark, viper and Guillaume, screw compensation balance.
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Diameter: 49 mm
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Weight: 83 g
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Signed: L. Leroy & Cie, Horlogers de la Marine Paris
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Leroy et Cie, French watch manufacturer
Louis Leroy became a watchmaker at the famous Le Roy et Fils company in 1879. He took over the company with Jules Halley des Fontaines and changed its name to L. Leroy & Cie. In 1895, Louis brothers Léon Leroy traded with him and became business partners in 1914. In 1906, he was named ” Horloger de la Marine “. Clock production was carried out in Besançon at 7 rue Mouillère. The director was Émile Léon Maillard-Salin. In 1901, he made the Leroy 01 pocket watch. The most complicated clock of that time, with 975 parts, is now in the Musée du Temps (Besançon). Functions: hours, minutes, seconds, time in 125 cities, weekday display, month display, year display, moon phases, seasons, solstices and equinoxes, the sky in 2 hemispheres, sunrise and sunset, Grand Sonnerie, chronograph. And five non-clock-related functions: hygrometer, thermometer, barometer, altimeter, and compass. Some well-known Swiss watchmakers, John César Piguet and his son Charles Émile Piguet, and Ulysse Capt and Marcel Capt, also worked on this watch in l’Orient. Léon-Ernest Aubert made other parts in Le Brassus.

Leroy was already on the market in 1920 with an invention that can be considered the forerunner of today’s fashionable “Automatic”. Around 1922, his wristwatches bore the inscription: Systeme de remontage automatique L. Leroy & Cie. 1922 . The Englishman John Harwood improved this system in 1924, and the A. Schild watch factory in Grenchen, Switzerland, was the first to manufacture this type of watch in the world.