1930s 9ct gold rectangular vintage Jump Hour watch
Date: 1932
Case: 9ct gold, 22 x 37mm (including lugs)
Movement: Manual wind
Dial: Three Apertures
Lugs: 16mm
An early vintage ‘Digital or Jump Hour’ watch, from the 1930s!
A 1932, 9ct gold rectangular vintage Jump Hour watch. The case measures 22 x 37 mm (including lugs) with 16mm lug size, with decorative engraving to the sides. The case is signed EP, hallmarked London 1932, with personal engraving to the inside ‘To Daddy, With love from Kiki’ and numbered to the back, London Made. The manual wind movement is Swiss Made with 15 jewels and numbered. The front of the case has three apertures showing the hours, minutes, seconds in black Arabic numerals.
‘Digital or Jump Hour’ watches
A digital watch displays the time using digits or numerically. A mechanical digital watch uses a mechanical movement to power the digital display rather than the commonly known digital watch, which usually refers to the electronically powered type. One could say that the early mechanical digital watches are the fore-runners of the modern digital watch. These type of displays have gained popularity in recent times but have been around since the 19th century.
The first known example of a mechanical digital watch, in this case a pocket watch was a one off by the French watchmaker Blondeau in 1830’s for the French King. It used a type of mechanism called ‘Jump Hour’. A disc with the hour digits marked on it is viewed through an aperture, a spring driven finger causes the disk to “jump” to the next hour when the previous hour ends.
Mass produced ‘jump hour’ (pocket) watches appeared in the 1890’s, made by the French company Cortebert and designed by Joseph Pallweber. The 1920’s saw the introduction of the ‘jump hour’ into the wristwatch, in effect the first digital wristwatch.
