My wife inherited some watches from her father from his side of the family.

I knew nothing of watches when I first got a look at these.

This is the first watch and still my favorite. It's a Louis Richard watch,KW/KS, 23 jewels, the dial has two hour registers and a seconds register around the outside. It also has a 1/4 second jump (I thin) at the 6 o'clock position.

It has two trains including two barrels. Each movement winds and sets separately.

The movement is not signed anywhere I can see without taking it out of the case. The dial is signed

"Louis Richard"
"NEUCHATEL"

There are no manufacturer or gold content marks that I can find on the case. The couvette is engraved as follows:

INDEPENDENT SECONDS
ANCHOR ESCAPEMENT
23 Jewels
Louis Richard
NEUCHATEL

Previous picture was the case front. Picture below is the case back.

The couvette inscribed with

INDEPENDENT SECONDS
ANCHOR ESCAPEMENT
23 Jewels
Louis Richard
NEUCHATEL

The dial...

The movement, lots going on in there!

I haven't been able to find any info on old Louis Richard watches. They still sell watches apparently, but nothing on their website gives any information.

If you wind these movements they will run. Not for long and I don't know how accurately, but they run.

Any ideas on a production date or info on antique Louis Richard would be appareciated.

hi Tim : What a beauty of a dual time zone watch,sometimes called a ship's captains watch,just lovely quality,wish it was mine Are there small impressed marks on the inside of the cuvette ,or the back or front cover? Louis Richard was an important Swiss watchmaker Baillie shows at Le Locle Switzerland ,1812-1875,and Paris 1812.

1812-1875
Swiss clockmaker and chronometer maker.
Full name: Louis JeanRichard-dit-Bressel.
Descendant of Daniel JeanRichard-dit-Bressel.
Nephew by marriage of Frédéric Louis Favre-Bulle.

1839
Invented a constant power escapement for watches and clocks.
With Ulysse Nardin and Henri Grandjean, founded the marine chronometer industry in Switzerland.

Thanks Tom!

The inside front cover has the numbers 626. The inside back cover says: 5975 and 626 and several service marks. There is also a small mark that has three carets, points up, on a shield looking thing.

Oh, did I mention that you can start and stop the sweep second hand on this watch with a small slide on the side of the case?

I thought it odd that Louis Richard wasn't mentioned Gilbert/Engle price guide. Is there any other sources of information for Louis Richard?

ok Tim; what is a caret??? :-) the book Watchmakers and Clockmakers of the World,by GH Baillie has what I gave you though I'm sure there's lots more as he is a fairly important maker. The slide stop was a feature called hacking, for setting watches all at the exact same time to the second, for military or nautical-marine purposes ,such as to take the time from the ship's chronometer and transfer it to the deck watches,or in olden days for a bunch of captains and ships officers to set their watches exactly to the same time for tactical military purposes before embarking on an operation.

Louis Jean Richard-dit-Bressel, born in Le Locle on 22nd October 1812, died there on 10th January 1875. His father was the great-grandson of Daniel Jean Richard, the founder of the watchmaking industry in the Neuchatel Mountains. As a young man, and without any formal training, Daniel produced the first watch in the region, which, over three hundred years later, boasts the highest concentration of watchmaking companies in Switzerland.

Thanks for the info. I got the impression that the Neuchatel guys were at odds with the Geneva bunch over a variety of topics including the Neuchatel guys not wanting to do things the Geneva way.

A caret is what you get when you press shift and 6 = ^. The whole mark kind of looks like a sargeants patch from Gomer Pyle. I was sure I'd seen that mark in a book somewhere, but haven't been able to find it.

Anyways it's a lovely watch. There isn't a heck of a lot on him online even though he was of some importance. I would think if Gerald Zimmerman sees the post and comments ,he will have far more info. There are others as well who specialize in European watches. My area of collecting is more marine items clocks watches compasses and ships logs ,model ships,shadowbox ships etc. There's a roughly similar watch on eBay # 290432742347

Pritchard devotes about a page to Louis Richard, which is a long entry by her standards. Among other things, she says he lived 1812-1875, with U. Nardin and H. Grandjean (famous names, of course) "[h]e was the creator . . . of the Swiss marine chronometer industry."

That ebay watch is amazingly similar. The movements aren't identical, but they are very similar in configuration.

Thanks for all your help guys!