Swiss automobile watch with experimental winding Circa 1919

Pocket watch with Seconde Morte
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An automobile watch with an extremely rare movement Seconde Morte with experimental winding mechanism, made by Patek, Philippe & C^o in Genève, Switzerland, circa 1919. The open faced plain case was crafted from sterling silver in the shape of an automobile watch case and has the English import Hallmarks from 1919. The white enamel dial has black Roman hour numerals, a subsidiary seconds dial with black Arabic numerals and black hands. The movement has a precision lever escapement and it is an extremely rare construction according to the invention of Adrien Philippe from 1866, presented at the “Universal Exhibition Paris 1867”. According to the movement’s number it was made in 1867 and is one of the few movements of this type still preserved today.
Case and movement have matching numbers and the dial and movement are signed.
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Diameter: 63 mm
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Signed: Patek, Philippe & C^o
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The movement of this watch is one of less  than ten of these movements known. One example with a gold case was part of the Noël Blanc Collection. Another piece with an additional flashing 1/5^th seconds achieved a record price in Geneva in 2001. All these watches had 27000 numbers.
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Seconde morte
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 1970’s and 1980’s, but actually 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 watches 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.