Pocket Watches · Pocket chronometer
18ct spring detent pocket chronometer by W & M Dodge, Manchester, hallmarked London 1877
- Maker / attribution
- W & M Dodge (maker)
- Date
- 1877 (hallmarked London)
- Historical period
- Industrial Revolution (1850 – 1900)
- Country of origin
- England
- Place
- Manchester
- Object type
- Pocket chronometer
- Dimensions
- Diameter 50 mm
- Auction house
- Gardiner Houlgate (auction house), Corsham
- Lot
- Sale 11, lot 352
- Credit line
- Auction lot record: lot 352, The Watch Auction, Gardiner Houlgate (21st October 2020)
- Catalogue title (original)
- W & M Dodge, Manchester - 18ct spring detent pocket chronometer, London 1877, the gilt frosted three-quarter plate movement signed W & M Dodge, 21 Market Place, Manchester, no. 4677, detent escapement (English)
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Record summary
Catalogued by Gardiner Houlgate (auction house), Corsham (lot Sale 11, lot 352), this is a pocket chronometer by W & M Dodge, made in Manchester, England, dated 1877 (hallmarked London). The Atlas places it in the Industrial Revolution period (1850 – 1900) of its Pocket Watches collection. Recorded dimensions: Diameter 50 mm. The record is illustrated with 1 photograph.
Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.
Catalogue description
Lot description — Gardiner Houlgate
W & M Dodge, Manchester - 18ct spring detent pocket chronometer, London 1877, the gilt frosted three-quarter plate movement signed W & M Dodge, 21 Market Place, Manchester, no. 4677, detent escapement with engraved balance cock with diamond endstone, blued helical spring and bimetallic compensated balance, hinged cuvette, the signed enamel dial with Roman numerals, minute track, subsidiary seconds and thirty hour up/down power reserve dial, blued steel hands within a plain case, case maker 'GHH' (George Henry Hornby), 110.4gm, 50mm (the movement requires repair) - ** with 'Clock and Watch Registration Form' from The Antiquarian Horological Society dated 13/7/1992
Historical context
Industrial Revolution (1850 – 1900)
American interchangeable-parts manufacture; railroad time standards; Swiss and German factory systems.
Machine production with interchangeable parts, pioneered by Waltham (1850s) and adopted by Elgin, Longines, Omega and others, made reliable lever watches widely affordable. Keyless winding became standard, railroad watch standards were introduced (1890s), and Swiss and American industries competed globally.
Read the period in the timelineMore pocket watches from this periodEarlier: Precision & Scientific Horology
Atlas type guide
Pocket chronometers and precision watches
A pocket chronometer is a watch built to observatory standards, traditionally with a detent escapement like a marine chronometer. English makers such as John Arnold and Thomas Earnshaw made the first pocket chronometers in the 1780s. In the nineteenth century the term increasingly referred to any watch that had passed official rating trials at observatories in Kew, Neuchâtel, Geneva or Besançon, and the Swiss lever chronometer became dominant.
Tourbillon and karrusel watches belong to the same world of precision. Breguet patented the tourbillon in 1801 to average out positional errors; Bahne Bonniksen's karrusel (1892) was a cheaper English alternative. Rating certificates (bulletins de marche) that accompany such watches are historical documents in their own right.
What to look for
- Detent escapement (no pallets; a fine spring detent locks the escape wheel).
- Observatory certificates, competition results or 'Chronometer' marking on the dial.
- Tourbillon carriage visible through an aperture or on the movement.
- Fine finishing: jewelled holes in gold chatons, diamond endstones.
Dating clues
- English pocket chronometers: c. 1780–1900.
- Observatory trials at Neuchâtel from 1866, Geneva from 1873, Kew from 1884.
- Karrusels: 1892–c. 1915.
General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.
Read next:TourbillonDetached lever escapement
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