Living and breathing Haute Horlogerie for more than two decades, Martin Green's everyday life is infused with watches. A love for the history of watches is combined with an eclectic taste, while his studies at the Gemological Institute of America sparked a deeper understanding of diamond set watches. After writing for several international publications he joined Haute Time. Savoring the good life he divides his time between Europe and the US, always on the look out for the next story to write.
What Makes The Sound Of A Minute Repeater So Magical?
The history of the minute repeater goes back to a time before electric light. As lighting an oil lamp was quite some work, watchmakers build repeating mechanisms in pocket watches so that they could sound the time on demand. The invention of the minute repeater was claimed by both Edward Barlow and Daniel Quare, but it was Quare who obtained a patent for it in 1687. Initially, watches equipped with a repeating mechanism used bells to chime the time, later to be replaced with wire gong, which took up less space. These weren’t minute repeaters, at first, but quarter repeaters, chiming the time to the closest quarter. READ MORE