Any horophile is likely to be enthused by the prospect of a watch featuring a tourbillon escapement, a split-seconds chronograph, a perpetual calendar or a moon-phase display. Few individual complications, however, are as guaranteed to pique the interest of a true connoisseur quite so readily as a repeater - the mechanism that gives an audible indication of time through a system of tiny hammers and gongs. In 1687, London watchmaker Daniel Quare was granted the first patent for a quarter repeater watch, giving the number of quarters past the hour on demand. The first minute repeaters - sounding the exact number of minutes past the hour - were developed in the early 1700s in Germany and Britain. Repeater watches were originally made to keep track of time in the candlelit gloom of the pre-electric era, but a combination of their beguiling sound and the admiration of collectors for their engineering has led to this function being developed and improved.
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