A WONDERFUL WATCH.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 78, 1 April 1905, Page 9

A WONDERFUL WATCH.

• What is probably the most wonderful watch ever made has recently been constructed in Paris to the order of a wealthy and scientific Portuguese,-Count de Carvalho of Lisbon. Certainly the Count's new timekeeper may be confidently said to be the most complicated of its kind watchmaking .has ever produced. It has two dials. The principal or front dial, besides the ordinary indications, of the hours, minutes, andf seconds, shows, on four small extra dials, tlfc phases and ages of the moon, the days of the'month and of the-week (for four hundred years), the year (for one century), the months, the seasons, the solstices, and the equinoxes; >ai chronograph indicating the'hours, minutes, seconds, and fractions of seconds for scientific observations; a spring de-. velopment making known ■ the exact moment the watch was last wound up; and indications, by separate hand, of the mean solar time and of- the equation of time. The reverse side (protected by the case) bears a thermometer (Centi,grade), a hair hygrometer, an aneroid i barometer with corresponding altimeter for heights not exceeding 5000 metres," two dials giving the hours of sunrise" and sunset at Bisboir; a ratchet system' permitting one . to- rectify - the setting without opening the ease; the corresponding hour (and hence, the longitude)' of the different regions. ot the globe identified with 12S different cities; and' the firmament. In fact, the watch Mas three firmaments, showing, though only; one at a time, the face of the sky in the form of tiny golden points on enamelled discs, at Paris, Lisbon, and Rio de Janeiro. There are about six hundred stars on each disc, and the stars rise, and set at their respective hours as determined astronomically. The watch,which is a repeater, and after giving the hour strikes the m'nutes, is very littlebirrger than an ordinary hunter." Its cost has not been disclosed, but the Count's cheque, for it must have contained four figures.