skyeriding
901
As a matter of fact, you are correct - The pocket watches weren't symmetrical!
I did a quick search and found this article from timeandwatches, which has some scans of past Minerva watches. One of the photos show a rattrapante pocket watch, which does indeed, have the top subdial sitting slightly higher up than the lower one! (I verified it by measuring the photo digitally)
If I had to make a guess, this is because they have the liberty to do so from a design perspective, as the subdial at 12 would need some extra space to squeeze the "Minerva" logo in between. Technically, I do not see any restriction to move the minute counter pinion closer to the centre, with some slight minor shifting of the wheel locations. I think there's just barely enough space without interfering with the crown wheel that it is sitting on top of.
Photo from Time and Watches
Regards,
skyeriding
Can someone explain to me
why, in this vintage watch (pic taken from Hodinkee), the subdials are not centered about the central axis? Given that the subdials are the same size, one first notices that the left subdial is framed by the 45 second arabic at 9 oclock, but the right sub...
As a matter of fact, you are correct - The pocket watches weren't symmetrical!
I did a quick search and found this article from timeandwatches , which has some scans of past Minerva watches. One of the photos show a rattrapante pocket watch, which does indeed, have the top subdial sitting slightly higher up than the lower one! (I ve...
i know nothing about chronograph movement architecture design, but it is interesting that given designers figured out how to size/configure the gear trains
so that the three axes (pinions) for the time hands and subdials were perfectly aligned, one would think that they also had a conscious reason for not having the subdial pinions symmetrically distanced from the center pinion. While it seems a bit crazy th...