Rare French gold quarter repeating pocket watch Circa 1819

Gold watch with ruby cylinder escapement
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A rare French 18 carat gold quarter repeating pocket watch, circa 1819. With English-type ruby cylinder escapement and ratchet key. A polished bezel, engine-turned flat band, the back is also engine-turned and a hinged gilded cuvette. Silver engine-turned dial with radial Roman numerals on a brushed chapter ring, outer dot minute divisions and blued steel Breguet hands. Matte gilt movement, standing barrel, English-type ruby cylinder escapement, the escape wheel and balance wheel with jewelled pivots, three-arm balance with pare-chute suspension on the upper pivot, blued steel flat balance spring, blued steel index regulator with bimetallic compensation curb, repeating on two gongs with two polished steel hammers activated by a pull-and-twist piston in the pendant. Dial and cuvette, signed, case and cuvette numbered.
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Diameter: 53 mm
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Thickness: 15 mm
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Signed: Breguet et fils
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The dial is patinated.
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Breguet used the cylinder escapement throughout his life. Like the virgule, it is a frictional rest escapement but of a far superior kind. In reality, the cylinder escapement as made by the English makers was not much better than the verge. This was because the diameter of the cylinder was too great in relation to the diameter of the balance, causing a loss of energy through friction. To reduce the friction, the English makers, who were very skilled in the art of jeweling, made the cylinder half-section ruby. The ruby was fitted into a steel frame – it was this form of cylinder escapement first used by Breguet. By about 1795 Breguet had developed the ruby cylinder to the very familiar “overhanging” ruby cylinder; it is therefore rare to find this escapement at such a late date. These escapements performed so well and with such increased consistency of rate that temperature errors were previously swamped by general bad.