A9459

Two Day Master Chronometer by Kullberg

£2,400.00

Signed  Victor Kullberg 105 Liverpool Rd London N. - Makers to the Admiralty
Circa   1915
A 20th Century English two day marine chronometer by Kullberg with added timing contacts.
Diameter [dial]   104 mm         

Out of stock

Description

A 20th Century English two day marine chronometer by Kullberg with added timing contacts.  Full plate spotted keywind reverse fusee movement marked with the broad ministry arrow, four turned pillars secured by blue steel screws.  Harrison's maintaining power with steel click and blue steel spring. Blue steel barrel ratchet wheel and double toothed click on the spotted barrel bridge.  Spotted cock with diamond endstone, two arm compensation balance with two circular weights and auxiliary temperature compensation, small timing screws and large timing nuts, freesprung palladium helical hairspring.  Earnshaw spring detent escapement, escape pivots with endstones.  The movement secured to the gilt dial plate by three brass screws.  Engraved signed and numbered silvered brass dial with broad ministry arrow, subsidiaries for seconds and power reserve indication, Roman numerals, blue steel hands.  Details added by T & F Mercer when the electrical contacts were added in 1928 and the dial cut away by the seconds subsidiary to accommodate them.  Fitted in a circular metal case with sprung rotating shutter to the winding hole in the base, push fit chrome bezel with flat glass. Slide to stop and start the balance.  External one second contacts and contacts for the microphone on the side of case to allow the chronometer to be used as a master device for slave dials.  Push fit copper lid marked “T & F Mercer – St Albans Eng.  Octo”.

The extracts are from the records at Greenwich which show it was bought in Nov 1915 for £37.  It was sold by MOD Tender on 29 Jan 1980.  The Digest Page notes the contacts were fitted in 1920/1921.  The date of conversion suggests that it was done at about the time that Mercers were working on control and slave clocks for ships.  Victor Kullberg was born in Sweden in 1824 and moved to London in 1851 where he established a business making fine watches and chronometers. In addition to selling under his own name he also supplied to many English retailers.  He almost always used the fusee in a reverse configuration to reduce friction and wear on the arbors.  He experimented with balances on his chronometers patenting flat rim varieties.  His chronometers won many medals for their timekeeping in the later half of the 19th Century.  The firm continued making chronometers after his death in 1890

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