When Time Learned to Speak
~ A TLS Meditation on the Magic of the Minute Repeater ~
***
London, the late 17th century. The city was dim, soot-stained, and chronically under-lit. By winter, night fell like a blackout curtain, smothering every alley and ambition. You could reach for your pocket watch - assuming you had one - but you'd see precisely nothing. No glow. No backlight. No helpful lume. Just cold brass. Blind hands. And yet… there it was: a chime. Not the bombastic clang of a church bell, nor the distant call of a village tower, but something far more intimate. A series of delicate, deliberate notes, rising like steam from within one’s own palm. The hour. The quarter. The minute. Time, articulated.
It wasn’t sorcery (though it bordered on it). It was the work of one Daniel Quare, tinkering away beneath a ceiling yellowed with tobacco smoke in a cramped workshop off Fleet Street. He wasn’t a poet or a philosopher; just a man meddling with brass and balance wheels. But what he wrought was revolutionary: a watch that could speak. Not in words, mind you, that would be far too French. But in sound. In chimes. On command, no less. A tug, a press, and the machine would sing: first the hours, then the quarters, then the minutes. A tiny orchestra, buried inside a waistcoat, performing for an audience of one. It was both miracle and mechanism, and in some circles, borderline heresy.
This was no gaudy novelty. It was born of necessity. Back then, if you wished to know the time in the dead of night, you had two options: light a candle… or listen.
In this piece, we won’t just explain the repeater. We’ll step into the dark with it. And listen - truly listen - to the machines that dared to make time sing.
***
Time, for most of human history, was more of a suggestion than a science. It flowed like water because, quite literally, that’s how we measured it. From Babylon to Beijing, civilisations relied on clepsydras - water clocks that dribbled truth by the drop, and no one lost sleep over a missed meeting. Precision wasn’t yet in fashion. Even the first gear-driven contraption attributed to Archimedes in the 3rd century BC was, allegedly, a kind of ancient cuckoo clock, a (allegedly) chirping, burbling machine that proved one thing quite clearly: sound has long been time’s most charming companion.
Fast forward to medieval Europe, where monks needed something more persuasive than dripping bowls to rouse them at Matins: enter the horologium, the early mechanical clock, designed not to tell the time, but to strike it. These machines didn’t have hands or dials, because frankly, who was looking? They had bells, and bells meant business.
As the Church grew increasingly fond of fixed schedules and divine punctuality, town squares and abbeys rang out with righteous regularity. Time was no longer passive, it had found a voice, and that voice was made of bronze. Fittingly, the very word clock descends from the Old Irish clocca, meaning bell. So before you ever glanced at a dial or wrist, you heard the hour coming for you, loud and unmissable. Like a mother-in-law in Westminster chimes.
Naturally, it wasn’t long before the medieval mind, never one to settle for “just functional”, began to embellish the tick. Once clocks could chime, the next logical step was to make them strut.
Ismail al-Jazari, a 13th-century Mesopotamian polymath who, upon seeing Archimedes’ chirping cuckoo, likely muttered, “Amateur.” Al-Jazari’s creations weren’t just clocks, they were spectacles: water-powered machines featuring programmable automata, birds that whistled, musicians that played, and - truly ahead of his time - a robotic waitress who served drinks from an internal reservoir (you read that right). One imagines she was more punctual than most barkeeps in Shoreditch today.
As these mechanical marvels flowed westward into Italy’s marble towers, France’s Gothic spires, and the damp ambition of England, they transformed into astronomical clock-cathedrals. These weren’t mere timepieces. They were cosmic calculators, tracking solar time, lunar phases, zodiac cycles, and all the appropriate moments for prayer, repentance, or lunch. Of course, they also required full-time horological babysitters, known as clock-keepers - men tasked with maintaining the celestial drama lest the moon rise two minutes early and throw off vespers.
Meanwhile, back in the provinces, your average village got none of that. No automata. No moon dials. Perhaps, if funds allowed, a single hand on a painted face. But still, when the bell rang, everyone looked up. Even if the time was wrong, it sounded authoritative. Because in the end, whether you had an astronomical orrery or just a lonely iron bell, time still arrived by ear before it ever appeared on the dial.
Now, for all their bells and cosmic choreography, early striking clocks were fairly straightforward beneath the theatre. Strip away the astrolabes and automata, and what you had was this: a shaft that turned once an hour, lifting a little hammer and letting it fall onto a bell. A sort of horological woodpecker. But by the 14th century, the woodpecker had learned to count. Thanks to a clever little invention called the countwheel, clocks no longer just struck once, they struck the number of the hour. Midnight? Twelve bongs. Noon? Also twelve bongs, but with more pigeons awake.
This was the age of public time, great tower clocks reminding townsfolk when to pray, when to work, and when to head to the tavern. Time was communal, and it arrived whether you liked it or not. But then came a quiet revolution. In the 17th century, someone had the rather brilliant idea ~ What if time didn’t just speak on the hour… but whispered when you asked it to? ~
Enter the repeater - a new breed of clock (and later, watch) that could chime the time on demand, triggered by a pull or a push. It didn’t wait for the top of the hour. It responded to you. The key innovation was something delightfully named the rack and snail, a mechanical system that made the whole business more elegant and reliable. And it was Reverend Edward Barlow, a priest with a fondness for gears (and presumably very punctual sermons), who first brought this idea to life in 1675. Barlow built a repeating clock that could chime both the hour and the quarter-hour, all at the press of a button (or rather, two buttons, more on that in a moment). It was a marvel of ingenuity, and in many ways the prototype for what repeating watches still do today: a whispered recital of time’s passing.
But Barlow wasn’t alone in his ambitions. Our earlier protagonist, the industrious Daniel Quare, was also hard at work, not in a church, but in a smoky little workshop off Fleet Street, where the scent of oil and brass clung to every surface like gossip in a tavern. Quare, it’s worth noting, wasn’t just clever — he was conscientious. Like many English craftsmen of the time, he was a Quaker, a member of the Religious Society of Friends. His faith forbade him from swearing oaths, a stance that occasionally ruffled the starched collars of Anglican officialdom, but it also earned him a quiet reputation: a man of precision, and of his word. This spiritual outlook bled into his work. His watches weren’t just admired for their ingenuity, but for their integrity, beautifully made, yes, but also marked by a certain unshowy honesty. Where others gilded and glorified, Quare refined and restrained. His repeater wasn’t merely clever; it was considered.
Naturally, as is the way with most great inventions (and great British bake-offs), a dispute broke out over who had actually come up with the idea first. Barlow and Quare locked horological horns throughout the 1680s, each claiming the honour of inventing the first repeating pocket watch. The matter became so contentious that King James II himself was forced to intervene. In 1687, he summoned both men to court - presumably not expecting the survival of his reign to hinge on bell hammers and lever pins - and ordered them to produce their finest chiming watches for inspection. The royal council examined both devices, sniffed the movements, listened for faults, and ultimately gave the crown’s blessing to Quare. Why? Simplicity. Barlow’s design required two buttons, one for the hours, one for the quarters, pressed simultaneously. Quare’s used a single, elegant pin that triggered the whole symphony at once. It was neater. Tidier. Less likely to baffle a bleary-eyed nobleman after dark. And so, Daniel Quare walked away with the patent, and a quiet place in history.
It was, in hindsight, the birth of something extraordinary: the transformation of public time into private theatre. No longer bound to tower bells or dining room clocks, time could now be summoned from within the pocket, sounded discreetly in the palm of the hand.
But the story didn’t end with Quare’s neat little pin. Repeating watches, at first, could only chime the hours and quarters, enough, surely, for anyone who simply wanted to know whether it was time for supper or scandal. But humans, being humans, wanted more precision, more poetry. Eventually, someone asked: "And what about the minutes?" That someone was likely German, circa 1720, where the first minute repeater emerged. Yet it was Abraham-Louis Breguet, the Swiss horological sorcerer whose name still haunts display cases, who transformed the complication entirely. Earlier repeaters had relied on tiny bells stuffed inside the case, which made them about as slim as a cheese wheel and just as graceful in the pocket. There was also the rather blunt alternative: the à toc or “dumb repeater,” which didn’t chime at all, but thudded discreetly against the case like a subtle knock. You felt the time, rather than heard it; ideal for stealth, but somewhat lacking in romance.
Then came 1783. Breguet, presumably while sipping something excellent, introduced coiled steel gongs: slender wires that snaked around the movement, allowing sound without the bulk. They rang true, they saved space, and they turned the minute repeater from a parlour trick into a masterpiece. Fast-forward a century, and by 1892, Audemars Piguet crafted the first-ever minute repeater wristwatch at the request of Louis Brandt & Frère*, no less (the very outfit that eventually became Omega). A chime for the modern age, now portable on the wrist. And so, what began as a way to hear time in the dark became the most revered and intricate complication in all of horology. Not just a marvel of engineering, but a kind of mechanical theatre: invisible, improbable, and oddly emotional.
Now then. How does this ungodly contraption actually work? Let’s try, as best we can, to explain the impossible.
©Revolution Watch
At first glance, it looks like the inner workings of a particularly anxious spider. Gears, racks, levers, and names that sound like characters from a Dickens novel: the all-or-nothing piece, the flirt, the surprise. It’s enough to send even a seasoned enthusiast reaching for the port decanter. So… how does one make sense of all this without crying? Truthfully, you don’t need to know every part by name - though hats off if you do. What matters is understanding the dance. Because that’s what a minute repeater is: a precisely choreographed performance where each component moves in time, not just with time. Let’s lift the curtain:
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Setting the Stage: The Slide, The Spring, The Spark
It all begins when you slide the repeater lever (or press a pusher on the side of the watch case, depending on the design). This isn’t just for show, it’s winding a dedicated mainspring hidden within the complication. Think of it as raising the curtain and simultaneously pulling back the bowstring. Once released, that spring will drive the entire performance from beginning to end.
But here’s the clever part: nothing happens unless everything is ready. The all-or-nothing mechanism ensures that if you don’t slide the lever fully, the watch doesn’t chime at all. No half-hearted performances allowed.
The Cast Assembles: Snails, Racks & Other Curious Creatures
Once the lever is fully cocked, the first actors take the stage - racks and snails, with names that sound more gastropodic than mechanical. Chief among them are the three snails, each playing the role of silent informant. The hour snail determines how many times the hammer will strike to announce the hour. The quarter snail, ever punctual, indicates whether it’s zero, one, two, or three quarters past. And finally, in minute repeaters, the minute snail refines the signal further, counting out the stray minutes after the last quarter has passed. None of them move during the chiming sequence - they simply wait to be read, like a trio of very precise librarians.
These snails aren’t moving at this point, they’re just sitting there, like divas waiting to be consulted. The racks come into play next: jagged little levers that "read" the snails by dropping onto their surfaces. The deeper the rack falls, the higher the count. It's how the mechanism knows whether to chime once or twelve times, a mechanical version of taking attendance.
And then we have our dearly beloved flirt. No, really, that’s its name. The flirt ensures precise timing by suddenly releasing the quarter rack only when all the other parts are in position, giving the whole thing a charming little snap.
The Performance: Time Sings
With all the cues in place, the performance begins. First, the hour hammer steps forward, striking a low-pitched gong - once for every hour that’s passed. Its sound is deliberate, resonant, the kind of chime that settles deep in the chest. Then comes the quarter hammer, offering a sequence of double-tones: one “ding-dong” for each quarter past the hour - so if it’s three quarters past, you’ll hear three of them, like a miniature Big Ben echoing in your palm. Finally, the minute hammer takes its turn, tapping out a series of high, crystalline strikes - one for every minute beyond the last quarter. Each chime is perfectly spaced, perfectly tuned, and if all has gone well, perfectly magical.
So if it’s 3:42, you’ll hear: three deep chimes (for the hours), two “ding-dongs” (for 30 minutes), and twelve high notes (for the minutes). It’s not just functional, it’s… symphonic. A private recital, delivered by a machine no thicker than a €1 coin and costlier than your first mortgage. Let’s take this Jaeger LeCoultre for example, and try to guess the indicated time based on the number of gongs. (explanation after the video)
Let’s decode the above chiming recital: you hear it begin:
Twelve low chimes, deliberate and resonant, the kind that settle in your chest. That’s the hour: twelve o’clock. Could be noon, could be midnight. Either way, we’re on the cusp of something.
Next comes the ding-dong... ding-dong... ding-dong - three in total. Each one marks a quarter past the hour. Three quarters? That’s 45 minutes.
Then, a flurry: fourteen crisp, high-pitched notes, like a pianist tapping the final bars of a nocturne. These count the minutes past the last quarter.
So: 12 hours, 45 minutes, 14 more minutes = 12:59. A moment caught in miniature, all that whispered from your wrist. But once the final chime fades, the magic doesn’t linger. Every component gracefully resets - racks rise, snails wait quietly, hammers return to rest. The mainspring winds down, the flirt flirts no more, and the stage goes dark.
Until you beckon it again.
***
Our little decoding exercise with Jaeger-LeCoultre was hardly the full story. We chose the most direct path, a kind of guided shortcut, but in truth the landscape of chiming watches is far richer, stranger, more operatic. One could spend a lifetime just wandering among its variations. There is the Westminster chime, whose four-note melody - instantly recognisable from Big Ben - has been miniaturised into a wristwatch, four gongs and four hammers conspiring to summon London’s ravens at will. There are carillon repeaters (you heard one by playing the audio bit at the beginning of this piece), exuberant creatures that multiply their gongs beyond the usual pair, weaving little symphonic flourishes instead of the ordinary ding-dong. And then there are cathedral repeaters, whose gongs are coiled twice around the movement, giving each strike a depth and resonance as though the sound had travelled through stone vaults before reaching the ear.
But at the summit lies the grande sonnerie, the watch that refuses to wait for your command. It strikes the hours and quarters automatically, as they pass, while also serving as a minute repeater on demand. A device of impossible generosity, and impossible complexity: more than six hundred parts, a mainspring barrel stretched for endurance, winding adapted to feed its hunger, safety systems upon safety systems to keep it all from collapsing into chaos. By comparison, a minute repeater with its three or four hundred components seems almost bashful. And it was here, at this terrifying peak of horology, that a mere human called Philippe Dufour quietly made his mark.
In 1992, Dufour, until then a name known mainly to fellow watchmakers, unveiled the first grande sonnerie wristwatch. He had spent years restoring their pocket-sized ancestors for Audemars Piguet, learning every fragility, every quirk. At some point, he decided that if such wonders could exist in a pocket, they could exist on the wrist. And if they could exist on the wrist, then why not a grande and petite sonnerie together?
What followed was not industrial production but stubborn solitude. One man at a bench, filing, polishing, shaping until steel looked like liquid and anglage caught the light like a blade. The result was not just a watch. It was a confession. A grande sonnerie that did not merely chime but seemed to breathe. Collectors speak of it with the reverence usually reserved for relics. For all its power, it is the product of silence, of long hours, patient hands, and a belief that if time was to speak, it must first be taught to sing.
The magnificent Philippe Dufour Grande and Petite Sonnerie in Action. ©SJX Watches
To see Dufour’s work - to hear it - is to understand just how quiet the loudest complications can be. There is nothing showy here. No skeleton bridges sculpted for Instagram, no desperate chase for world records or patents. Just patience, restraint, and the belief that if a thing is worth making, it is worth making slowly.
And yet, even the most sacred chapels of horology do not exist in isolation. Beyond Dufour’s window, in other valleys and ateliers, there are watchmakers who speak in different registers - not quieter, not louder, but broader. Where Dufour crafts a single voice, others summon orchestras. Where he files a bevel by hand, others marshal teams of engravers, enamelers, acousticians. The pursuit is the same: to make time sing. The scale, however, changes.
And so we turn to Geneva, to a maison that has never rushed, never shouted - but knows exactly when to raise the curtain. Among Switzerland’s oldest maisons, Vacheron Constantin has always moved with the kind of quiet confidence that doesn’t need to prove itself. Established in 1755 - before Mozart played his first concert - the brand has built its reputation not on noise, but on nuance. Still, when it came time to explore the world of chiming watches at their most complex, Vacheron composed its own chorus. In 2017, nestled within its exclusive Les Cabinotiers department, Vacheron unveiled the Symphonia Grande Sonnerie 1860 - a timepiece so elaborate it took ten years to develop, and even then, could only be made in excruciatingly small numbers. This was not a revival. It was an answer to a question very few even dared to ask: Can the grande sonnerie be reimagined for the modern wrist, without losing the poetry of its past? The result is staggering.
Its case hums with harmony. The movement contains over 800 components, each hand-finished, each essential. It strikes the hours and quarters automatically, yes - but also listens for your command, and responds with a minute repeater function as smooth and soulful as anything you’ll ever hear from inside a watch case. And the sound. Oh, the sound. Rich, resonant, precise - not just in pitch, but in poise. There is no metallic screech, no rushed clatter. Instead, a performance: gongs that sing rather than shout, hammers that dance rather than punch, and timing that flows not like a machine, but like breath.
It is easy to look at such a piece - its exposed hammers, its gongs curled like treble clefs, its price whispered in confidential tones - and see only extravagance. But that would be missing the point entirely. This is not showmanship. It is orchestration. A mechanical sonata composed not in notation, but in brass and steel and time itself.
It all began, as many things do, in darkness. A man reached for his pocket watch, saw nothing, and listened. A chime rose - precise, private, utterly improbable. Time, articulated. Not as numbers, but as notes. What followed was centuries of refinement: bells became gongs, towers became wrists, and the hammer - that humble horological woodpecker, learned to sing.
We’ve journeyed from dripping clepsydras to countwheels, from the quiet certainties of Daniel Quare to the sacred madness of Philippe Dufour. We’ve seen hammers strike with monastic patience, snails consulted like oracles, and mainsprings wound not for power, but poetry. By the time you hear a grande sonnerie whisper its passage from within a cathedral of sapphire and gold, you realise: no one needs this. Not in any rational sense. And that is exactly why it matters. Minute repeaters are not tools. They are acts of devotion disguised as engineering. Tiny theatres in which time, for once, stops running and starts performing. We no longer build them because we must. We build them because we can. And because, once in a while, it's worth remembering:
Time doesn’t just pass. It speaks.