We tend to think of digital watches as a purely 70s phenomenon, the logical next step after the introduction of quartz at the beginning of the decade, the last stop before the future arrived – or at least that’s how I felt when I first strapped on my Texas Instruments LED (finished in leather-effect plastic obviously). But jumping hour watches (basically digital mechanic timepieces) using numbers instead of hands, have a much longer history – The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy author, Douglas Adams, was, rarely, wrong about digital watches being a recent invention or a pretty neat idea for humans.
Hands are more intuitive if you want an impression of time but less so when you want a more binary display. This desire to give hierarchy to the different units of time lies behind regulator clocks (which prioritise the seconds and minutes) and was, apparently, the motivation behind the Austrian watchmaker Josef Pallweber’s development of a digital pocket watch movement. With his movement the time was shown on discs that “jumped” into position as time passed rather than progressing steadily as in a conventional watch. He patented the mechanism in 1883 and licensed it to IWC. Fitted with jumping hours and minutes, the Pallweber watches sold in the thousands and were often fitted with portholes in the case, allowing the time to be read at a glance without opening the watch. IWC’s success with the Pallweber movement spawned imitators, but most found it too difficult to manage the power required by the jumping mechanism and interest in the idea eventually faded away.
Examples of early Pallweber pocket watches licensed to IWC.
The post First World War advent of wristwatches as a commercial phenomenon saw a resurgence in the idea thanks to the wristwatch’s weak spot, the fragility of the glass over the dial. While grills were a workable solution for miliary watches, the new age demanded a more refined solution, one of which was a miniaturisation of Pallweber’s invention. Early examples from Audemars Piguet, Cartier, Patek Philippe, followed suit in mixing jumping hours with moving minutes – the energy required to jump the minutes being simply too great for a wristwatch-sized movement at the time. While the clean lines were right in tune with design concerns of the day, the early jump hour watches never quite took off as the robustness of the case was set off by the comparative fragility of the movements inside making sure there was enough energy for each hour’s jump.
Fast forward to the 1980s and what was left of the watch industry was looking for designs that accentuated the difference between quartz and mechanical watches, leading to the revival of tourbillons, skeleton watches and minute repeaters as objects of desire. Perhaps the most important character, however, was Gerald Genta. Having struck out on his own, after designing for the likes of Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe, Genta set about establishing himself as the original “master of complications”, making watches for the world’s most discerning clients and setting his watchmakers ever more impossible challenges, including the Jump Hour which he launched in 1991. Jumping Hours, along with retrograde hands, became a signature complication for the Genta brand even making an appearance in the Mickey Mouse watches.
Left: Daniel Roth Papillon, with a unique “butterfly” dial layout and a pair of minute hands that retract and extend at the top of each hour.
Right: The Louis Vuitton Tambour Spin Time relies on 12 revolving cubes placed around the circumference of the dial to show the current hour.
As interest in high-end watchmaking grew through the ‘90s, the complication was adopted by a number of independent makers including Daniel Roth, whose 1999 Papillon was the last movement he designed for his eponymous brand. Jump Hours were also added to the repertoire of the emerging breed of movement design studios such as Renaud et Papi and Christophe Claret, and from there to clients such as Harry Winston. Both Genta and Roth lost their eponymous brand names (which have ended up as part of LVMH) during that decade.
In the 21st century, the new mechanical watchmaking age has taken to solving, refining, and enhancing Pallweber’s initial idea. The Opus series, initiated by Max Büsser, was conceived in part as a way of showcasing a new wave of creative watchmakers, with the third watch released in 2003, a collaboration with Vianney Halter. It imaginatively showed the creative potential of the jumping hour concept. Inspired by the Curta mechanical calculator, the dial featured six portholes showing hours, minutes, seconds, and the date. Although perhaps unwisely given the green light by Harry Winston at the time, as it took nearly a decade thereafter to make the movement work properly thanks to the almost unmanageable power requirements for the six jump elements.
The jumping hours in the Harry Winston Opus 3 are part of a completely digital mechanic display, a first in watchmaking, where the hours and minutes are indicated by jumping numerals in “bubble” apertures, and a four-second countdown appears before each minute jumps.
The most complete interpretation of the Jumping Hour mechanism has to be A. Lange & Söhne’s Zeitwerk. First launched in 2009, it features large jumping hour and minute numerals inspired by the Semper Oper clock in Dresden, all driven by a highly complex constant force mechanism designed to release its energy once per minute in precise pulses.
Since then, the jump hour complication has been used in a number of imaginative ways as brands and watchmakers find ways of coping with the power requirements for the precise simultaneous change in numerals. In 2009 Louis Vuitton introduced an interesting variation that featured rotating cubes, rather than discs, which has become that brand’s signature complication. Van Cleef & Arpels released the Heure Ici et Heure Ailleurs in 2014, with a complete movement designed by Agenhor.
Bovet Dimier Récital 15 (2024), a jumping hours watch with a patented hidden double coaxial seconds mechanism.
Bovet Dimier Récitl 15 (2024), a jumping hours watch with a patented hidden double coaxial seconds mechanism.
That same year, Bovet presented the Dimier Récital 15 with jumping hours, retrograde minutes and double-seconds, all of which were visible through the dial. The latest version introduced in 2024, is much more demure, housed in a grade 5 titanium case with a salmon lacquered dial on which one can see the retrograde minutes display and a window at 3 o’clock to reveal the jumping hour indication.
Left: The Vanguart Black Hole Tourbillon’s jumping hours features a unique, linear format on the left side, next to a triangular-shaped indicator, complemented by a 3-tier concentric automaton dial that is in constant motion, displaying the passage of time.
Right: Urwerk UR-120 Lightspeed, with its “split open” digital hour satellite, which morphs into a V-shape as it rotates, revealing the new hour.
Patek Philippe has released the occasional limited-edition version (the latest for the recent 175th anniversary of the Maison) while makers such as MB&F, Urwerk and HYT have all produced creative expressions of the concept that take advantage of its inherent retrofuture feel aesthetic. Ludovic Ballouard developed his Upside Down watch, which cleverly lightens the power requirements by having each hour on its own disc. Vanguart’s Black Hole, with its central flying tourbillon, indicates time as a linear time display, with the hour and minutes each having their own concentric dial that jumps to the next numeral.
And then, right on cue, this year’s Watches and Wonders saw a number of new interpretations – alongside the Gerald Charles watch, there are Jumping Hours watches from Cartier (reissuing their Tank à Guichets from 1928), Hautlence and somewhat unexpectedly, from Bremont.
It turns out that digital watches are an even neater idea that Douglas Adams thought possible.
Author: James Gurney
Lead image: A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk
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