Split-Seconds Observatory Chronometer

Of all the observatory watches in this collection, this is the one that won. In 1933 Ulysse Nardin entered movement 17731 in the pocket-chronometer trials at the Neuchâtel Observatory, where entries were rated for weeks, position by position and temperature by temperature, against astronomical time. It came away with the First Prize in the first class. The bulletin survives, the extract accompanies the watch, and the full result is set out in The Record below.

What makes the piece remarkable is that the precision lives inside a complication. This is a split-seconds chronograph: two centre hands sweep together, one stops at a press to catch an intermediate time, and snaps forward to rejoin its partner at the next. Regulating an ordinary watch to prize standard is hard; regulating one carrying rattrapante works is the summit of the craft, and everything here still functions exactly as it should.

The watch is built as an instrument. The case is polished steel in the full Goliath format, 65.9mm, with both covers closing firmly and the maker's cartouche inside. The dial is white grand feu enamel without a hairline or a chip: bold Breguet numerals under a blued steel poire hour hand, a thirty-minute recorder at twelve, small seconds at six carrying the movement number, and an outer track dividing each second into fifths, the scale the trials were read on.

It winds, sets and runs correctly; the chronograph starts, stops and resets cleanly, and the split hand divides and catches exactly as designed. It is complete in its original Ulysse Nardin fitted box.

Ulysse Nardin sent watches to Neuchâtel for decades, and the house's standing rests on results like this one. Most surviving pieces of the type can claim the family resemblance; this one holds the prize itself.

The marks, the movement and the condition are set out piece by piece in the drawers below; the 1933 result and the observatory extract are set out in The Record.