Split-Seconds Observatory Chronometer

One watch, doing two difficult things at once: keeping observatory-grade time, and driving a split-seconds chronograph while it does so. Ulysse Nardin entered this movement, number 121026, in the 1943 pocket-chronometer trials at Neuchâtel and placed in the first class; the printed extract accompanies the watch and the result is set out in The Record below.

In the hand it is an instrument before it is anything else: a Goliath of 64.6mm in Staybrite stainless steel, hinged back, inner dust cover, a watch with the presence of a piece of laboratory equipment. The dial is white vitreous enamel, laid out for timing: bold Breguet numerals, violet-blued Breguet hands with the open ring near the tip, a thirty-minute counter at twelve, running seconds at six, an outer fifth-of-a-second track, signed Ulysse Nardin, Chronomètre, Locle Suisse and numbered to match the movement.

The split-seconds works from a large button on the case band: one centre hand stops to read an intermediate time while the other runs on, then the two snap back together. Start, stop and reset run through the crown pusher. Every function engages cleanly, and the watch winds, sets and runs well.

One honest fault, named up front: a small chip to the crystal rim near the seven. The crystal is a replaceable part, and the watch behind it is unaffected.

It is supplied in its original Ulysse Nardin Locle-Genève fitted box together with the observatory extract, a pairing that rarely survives intact. Watches of this class were made in small numbers for a purpose that no longer exists, and the ones that can still show their results are the ones that matter.

The marks, the movement and the condition are set out piece by piece in the drawers below; the 1943 placing is set out in The Record.