Swiss gold quarter repeater with Pouzait escapement Circa 1810

Gold lever with dead centre seconds
–
A very fine and rare Swiss, 18 Carat gold quarter repeating, dead centre seconds pocket watch with Pouzait escapement, circa 1810. A directoire, entirely engine turned, gilt cuvette. White enamel dial, Arabic numerals, outer minute divisions, and winding aperture at 4 o’clock. Blued steel Breguet hands.
–
A gilt brass full plate movement, fixed barrel, slow beat Pouzait lever escapement with the large brass five arm balance set in the centre of the backplate, large safety roller acting on a single pin set on one of the arms and acting on inside and outside walls depending if the entry or exit pallet is engaged, small lever protruding at 1 o’clock to stop the watch, time setting by means of a serrated wheel at 5 o’clock.
Dial and movement signed.
–
Diameter: 58 mm
–
Signed: Breguet et Fils, Swiss
–
Pouzait Escapement during the last quarter of the 18th century, several watchmakers tried to produce watches with dead centre-seconds hands, much in favour among the scientific community and on the Chinese market. The attempt made by Moïse Pouzait featured a lever escapement associated with a large seconds beating balance. Due to its spectacular aspect and in spite of its inertia sensitivity, Pouzait’s escapement was much appreciated by the Chinese, before the invention by Jacot of the so called Chinese duplex escapement, enabling the production of dead centre seconds watches. In 1786 Pouzait made a model of his escapement which he presented to the Geneva Société des Arts, and which can still be seen in their collection. Pouzait (1743-1793)
–
In 1786 Jean Moïse Pouzait presented a model of his lever escapement to the Geneva Society of Arts. The idea seems to derive from the pin wheel escapement in clocks and as in the pin wheel, there was no safety action (later ones, including these two, have the safety action). There are some differences, however: Pouzait’s pallets are not just pins, they are small pin like rectangular teeth, so in fact, it is an escapement with a divided lift. Pouzait, who eleven years earlier had invented the independent second’s mechanism, possibly wanted to make a simpler mechanism for dead seconds. Whatever his motives, he was one of the first to introduce the lever escapement to the Continent.