jump hour

[pago]

Gee, I hate to sound ignorant -- but could someone tell me what a jump-hour watch is and how its supposed to work? Thanks.

Pago

[pago]

Gee, I hate to sound ignorant -- but could someone tell me what a jump-hour watch is and how its supposed to work? Thanks.

Pago

[doug sinclair]

Pago,

Without a picture of the particular watch, my guess is that you are dealing either with an early mechanical digital watch, or one with a "flirt". That is, a retrograde hour hand that reaches 12:00 then jumps back to 00:00 hours. Wittnauer made one of these they called a "Sector". There have been watches made which have the usual analog minute hand, but a digital hour hand. Could be one of those as well.

[Kate N]

There are more examples of jump hour wristwatches than pocketwatches.
Here are a few examples:
jump hour (http://i20.ebayimg.com/01/i/07/41/c7/46_12.JPG)
another (http://i6.ebayimg.com/02/i/07/4a/a5/f8_12.JPG)
quartz (http://www.mansionrose.com/images/041117315a.jpg)
jump hour pocket watch (http://i23.ebayimg.com/01/i/07/1b/56/da_12.JPG)
Some jump hour watches combine rotating wheels that display the time with hands. Some have hands only. Others only have display wheels.
On some, only the hours are marked on a rotating wheel, others have hours and minute disks, some also have seconds disks.
As you can see from the examples above, even quartz watches can be made in jump hour form.
Doug mentioned the type, called retrograde, where there's a hand, rather than a rotating disk, which shows 12 hours,counts the hours down, then returns to the top to begin the count again.

[pago]

Thanks all for your help. Pictures are
worth a thousand words!

Pago