A mystery

watch A watch is a portable timepiece intended to be carried or worn by a person. It is designed to keep a consistent movement despite the motions caused by the person's activities. A wristwatch is designed to be worn around the wrist, attached b ...

(same applies for mystery clock) is a generic term used in

horology Horology (; related to Latin '; ; , interfix ''-o-'', and suffix ''-logy''), . is the study of the measurement of time. Clocks, watches, clockwork, sundials, hourglasses, clepsydras, timers, time recorders, marine chronometers, and atomic clo ...

to describe a

timepiece A clock or a timepiece is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and the ...

whose working is not easily deducible, because it seems to have no movement at all, or the hands do not seem to be connected to any movement, etc. One example is a type of

mechanical watch A mechanical watch is a watch that uses a clockwork mechanism to measure the passage of time, as opposed to quartz watches which function using the vibration modes of a piezoelectric quartz tuning fork, or radio watches, which are quartz wat ...

where the movement is transmitted to the hands through a transparent crystal toothed wheel. The first see-through watch, known in French as ("mysterious watch"), was invented by Hugues Rime, marketed by the French firm Armand Schwob et frère, and made in Switzerland. As an item of historical/horological value, it is preserved in various museum collections, such as the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, the

German Clock Museum The German Clock Museum (german: Deutsches Uhrenmuseum) is situated near the centre of the Black Forest town of Furtwangen im Schwarzwald (Germany), a historical centre of clockmaking. It features permanent and temporary exhibits on the history of t ...

, the International Museum of Horology, the Musée d'Horlogerie of Le Locle (Switzerland), the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Neuchâtel, the U.S.

National Watch and Clock Museum The National Watch and Clock Museum (NWCM), located in Columbia, Pennsylvania, is one of a very few museums in the United States dedicated solely to horology, which is the history, science and art of timekeeping and timekeepers. Like its subsidiar ...

, and the Vienna Clock and Watch Museum.

References

{{Reflist, 30em

External links

Article published in Antiquarian Horology on the first transparent watch

Video of the first transparent watch at the National Watch & Clock Museum, USA

* ttp://nawcc.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/BFCA37A3-413D-4ABF-8519-305097995100 Record of the first transparent watch at the NWCM
Hamilton Mystery watch, early 1960s
Watches Clocks

See also

References

External links