Description: Fragmentary, unfinished and destroyed backplate for a small sized movement for a Fatton inking chronograph. Lever escapement, two armed compensation balance. Subsidiary dials for hours and minutes on 9 position and seconds with inking chronograph hand at 3 position.
Provenance: Ex. George Brown, thence by decent
Additional Info:
Fredrick Louis Fatton first worked for Abraham Louis Breguet in Russia between 1801-1807. By 1814 he was Breguet’s independent agent in London. Interestingly, Fatton is one of several men who signed their work Elève de Breguet. Fatton was the inventor of the Inking Chronograph. In 1822, Breguet sold his first inking, or ‘Fatton’, chronographs, the fruit of a joint venture with the watchmaker Fatton, one of his most gifted pupils. This instrument was equipped with a seconds hand which deposited, as required, a minuscule drop of ink on the dial, thus literally marking out a length of time. The system was to be brought to perfection by Louis-Clément Breguet, who confirmed to the Academy of Sciences in 1850 that the idea for an inking chronograph belonged originally to his grandfather and not to the Parisian watchmaker Rieussec, who had patented a very similar system some thirty years before, in 1821.
Ref.: Breguet E., Minder N., Abraham-Louis Breguet. L’horlogerie à la conquête du monde, Musée national suisse, le Musée du Louvre et Somogy Editions d’Art, Paris, 2011, P. 33, 34, No. 4001
Ref.: Daniels G., The Art of Breguet, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 1974, P. 263, Pic. 311 a,b, No. 4001
Antiquarian Horology 