Swiss astronomical repeating watch with calendar Circa 1895

Open faced pocket watch with split seconds chronograph by Alphonse Pavid
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A Swiss heavy, astronomical Geneva minute repeating watch with perpetual calendar, moon phase and split seconds chronograph, circa 1895, with original box. The watch was entered 1895 for the Geneva observatory competition “Chronomètres 1re Classe”. With extract from the chronometer archives by Andreas Hidding.
A heavy and complicated pocket watch in absolutely perfect condition. Only a few watches with this quantity of complications have ever been granted chronometer status.
18 carat pink gold case; white enamel dial with Roman hours, Arabic minutes, split-seconds chronograph, spade hands and four subsidiary dials for month/year/constant seconds, day, date and moon phases with lunar calendar; bridge movement, 2 hammers / 2 gongs and a gold screw compensation balance.
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Diameter: 59 mm
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Weight: 208 g
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Signed: Alphonse Pavid à Genève
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Alphonse Pavid, Geneva
Geneva maker of pocket chronometers and regleur Jean-Louis Alphonse Pavid was born on June 17, 1853. His father worked as a watchmaker and jeweller in Yverdon. Alphonse worked in the Geneva workshops of Albert Potter in the late 1870s and the early 1880s. From 1884 to about 1915 Alphonse Pavid received a number of test certificates for his chronometers; they were issued by the observatories in Geneva, Neuchâtel and Kew-Teddington. During the chronometer test in 1891 Alphonse received an award in the serial testing; the five best chronometers of each maker were judged. On April 12, 1893 Alphonse invented a regulation system with flexible balance spring studs and a bimetallic compensation balance spring in an unusual design (“steel-brass balance, System Pavid”). It looks like neither of these inventions was ever registered as a patent though. In 1894 Alphonse Pavid and Genoese precision regleurs G.-Marie Rouge, Alexis Favre, J. Cordier, Charles-Auguste Paillard and Marius Fave introduced a reform of the chronometer testing process. 1896 Alphonse Pavid exhibited his products at the national Swiss exhibition in Geneva and was awarded a prize with distinction in the serial tests for regleurs.