Based on Omega’s 1920s workhorse 26.5 movement, this example is in nickel silver (a.k.a. German silver) and styled to resemble military trench watches from a decade earlier. I love the cathedral-style hands, although re-luming them was a bit tricky. The nickel silver is a bit soft, so the case back wore through on the edges and it was patched by a jeweler at some point.

Pocket watches with a chronograph complication are pretty rare, so I was thrilled when I was able to pick up this single-pusher Le Phare example, which was in non-running condition and very dirty but which cleaned up beautifully and still works well. I didn’t do much with the case, because the real beauty here is on the inside. Chronograph lovers with a keen eye may notice the lack of an intermediate minute recording wheel, as well as the odd shark tooth design of the minute recording wheel itself. That’s because this watch has an instantaneous minute recording mechanism that builds spring tension until it snaps the minute recorder over at the appropriate moment. It’s pretty cool and amazingly still works very well. I can only speculate that this mechanism design didn’t show up in later wristwatch chronographs because it was difficult to miniaturize.

I honed in on this Gruen pocket watch from the 1920s for its lovely gold relief dial. It’s interesting to contrast the relatively simple finishing of the Swiss made movement in this watch with the relatively elaborate finishing on contemporary American-made pocket watch movements. The keyless works design on this watch is also very much in line with the Swiss designs that would come to dominate the wristwatch industry, in contrast to keyless works designs on American pocket watches, which were designed quite differently.