In today's article, we explore the story of a watch and a brand forgotten in time. While Invicta might not be a popular name in these circles, that certainly was not always the case. A deep dive into the topic reveals the various interesting technical developments that happened within this once historically important watchmaker.
The Invicta Story
Invicta is a name that is familiar to many watch collectors but carries a very heavy negative connotation. When one thinks of Invicta, they imagine large and brash timepieces frequently sold in malls at heavily discounted prices – a far cry from the Invicta brand of the past. Invicta was founded in 1837 in Chiasso, Switzerland as R. Picard. While not the most prolific watchmaker of the era, it impressively managed to continue its business well through the turn of the 19th century. Information on the Invicta-Seeland connection is still slightly vague to this day. In 1915, it was said that Invicta had teamed up with Seeland and that was the beginning of the Invicta-Seeland partnership. Not much of the Seeland brand is known apart from the fact that it was founded by Frederic Seeland and was registered as “SWC” in 1896. By 1937, the company had changed its name to Invicta SA and there are many examples of vintage advertisements showing this union of the two brands.
A vintage Invicta advertisement, also showing the Invicta-Seeland relationship
Source: Invicta
Records show that the beginning of the 20th century might have been the true technical renaissance of the brand, in which it started to develop and produce its own line of wrist chronographs in the 1930s. In 1932, the brand presented the world’s first rectangular chronograph known as the Chrono-Sport. An example of this was auctioned in 1995 by Antiquorum in Geneva, and according to the catalogue, the Invicta Chrono-Sport was known to have been produced in only 50 examples in the 1930s, and only 6 original pieces were still known to exist during that period. Prior to the auction in 1995, another variation of the Chrono-Sport was also auctioned by Antiquorum in 1992 and sold for 8,625 CHF, which was a sizeable sum back then. Few Chrono-Sports have appeared in the market since then, and it is highly likely that these watches will continue to remain in the private collection of committed vintage chronograph enthusiasts for a long time.
Invicta Chrono-Sport
Source: Antiquorum
In the 1940s, Invicta introduced two chronographs that looked aesthetically similar bearing a rotating bezel and more interestingly, ball shaped pushers. These watches were the Time Log chronograph and the Secontrol, with the former being a 3-button pusher chronograph that utilized a Landeron 47 movement beneath the dial and the latter being a simple 3-handed chronostop watch. These ball shaped pushers seem to have been somewhat of an Invicta trademark during this period, and were based on a patent by the Neuchatel watchmaker Henri Jacot-Guyot, who had previously worked on the development of the Chrono-Sport for Invicta previously. These uniquely shaped pushers were not only found on the Time Log and the Secontrol, but also other watches sold by Invicta during this period. Very little is known about the watchmaker/inventor Henri Jacot-Guyot, but many of his works seem to have revolved around creating interesting variations of the chronograph, and novel ways of “stopping” and “capturing” time.
A Seeland Landeron 47 chronograph bearing the “ball shaped” pushers
Source: Watchuseek
The Unexpected Discovery
My Secontrol journey began almost 6 years ago, when I found a New Old Stock (NOS) version of it with its full box and papers being sold by a picker on eBay. I did not know what it was, but I was instantly attracted to its gorgeous salmon dial, its sharp bezel reminiscent of a vintage pilot watch, and its unique pushers which I had never seen before on a chronograph, let alone a watch.
Once the watch arrived, like every other studious watch enthusiast out there, I began my borderline obsessive hunt for knowledge, eager to find out everything about the watch. This was when I first encountered Joël Pynson and Sébastien Chaulmontet, the authors of the book, Chronographs for Collectors, who operated under an online moniker, Time2Tell. After a couple of messages and email back and forth, it was clear that Joël was probably one of the only few people who had any inkling of what this watch was, with his tremendously vast knowledge of everything and anything to do with chronographs. I scanned the original papers and instructions (possibly the only one remaining in existence), and sent it over to Joël. And very quickly, an idea was born to write a short article on it which was published in German on Armbanduhren Magazin. Armed with a newly found treasure trove of information provided by Joël, I began my further descent down this rabbit hole.
The Seeland Secontrol
The Seeland Secontrol for a lack of a better description – is a very mechanically quirky watch. This is perhaps one of the strangest chronograph movements I have ever encountered.
When engaged, the pusher at 4 o’clock stops the central seconds hand from moving. However, unlike a conventional chronograph which stops the sweep seconds hand from moving when pressed once, the Secontrol requires users to constantly be applying pressure on the 4 o’clock pusher for the seconds hand to remain in a stationary state, almost akin to a hacking seconds mechanism. The 2 o’clock pusher on the other hand, is the watch’s flyback mechanism. When engaged, the seconds hand resets itself to the 12 o’clock position.
The original instructions on the Secontrol watch markets it as the only watch of the type with complete control of the sweep second hand. The instructions state that the watch can be used as a normal stopwatch, or with the elapsed time register using a “red pointer on the bezel”. The intriguing part is that the watch actually does not have a red pointer on the bezel, and when I had first received the watch, the watch only came with a paper-thin plastic crystal with a red indicator at 12 o’clock which did not fit on to the watch anymore. The crystal was then promptly replaced, and the original one has been kept separately for documentation. The thinness of the crystal did raise questions as to whether this watch actually ever did make it out for retail consumers to purchase, given that it would not have been feasible or particularly secure to offer such a curiously thin acrylic crystal.
Unlike a normal chronograph, the use case of the Secontrol mechanism is arguably more limited. While having lost a lot of its practical meaning today, the chronograph was once a very reliable and essential mechanism for professionals in various occupations ranging from those in the medical field to the military. It would be difficult to imagine that the Secontrol was a very popular watch given its fairly limited use case.
A scan of the original instruction manual
Source: Generalist
The movement on the Secontrol is a modified A. Schild caliber 984 which was initially a normal manual wind watch with a sub second at 6 o’clock, and came in different 7/15/17 jewel variations. In the case of the Secontrol, the basic AS 984 movement has been modified as per Henri Jacot-Guyot’s patent filing for the Secontrol. He seems to have filed for the patent of the Secontrol first in Switzerland in January 1940, and then subsequently in the United States in 1941. In the patent file for the Secontrol mechanism, it is noted that:
“The object of the invention is to provide a watch of the above mentioned type having simple and efficient means which permit of disconnecting and stopping temporarily the independent seconds hand without restoring it to the zero position and which are also adapted to be used for both the stopping and restoring to zero of said seconds hand.”
Seeland Secontrol (top 2 pictures), AS 984 (bottom)
Source: Generalist, eBay
What we believe to be Henri Jacot-Guyot’s patent for the Secontrol (No. US2284418A)
Source: Google Patents
He then further expounds on the way the mechanism works in greater detail through his drawings and his technical explanations:
“Figure 1 shows the the normal or operative position of the above described mechanism, wherein the spring l3 maintains the intermediate wheel 6 in gear with the center wheel 2 to cause rotation of the independent seconds hand. Besides, owing to the said spring the rocking lever 4 bears upon both the oscillatable levers l and B.
When it is desired to stop the independent seconds hand temporarily without restoring the same to the normal or zero position the pusher ll may be pressed down (see Figure 2). The lever 4 is then rocked by the lever 1 against the action of the spring [3 and thereby throws the intermediate wheel 6 out of gear of the center wheel 2. Upon releasing of the pusher H the spring l3 returns the different levers to the normal position shown in Figure 1.”
It is also further interesting to note that in his patent filing illustration, it also depicts the ball shaped pushers we see on the Secontrol, leading us to believe that the invention of the Secontrol watch in its entirety was a very holistic and calculated effort from Invicta and Jacot-Guyot that really displays the level of detail and planning involved in the watch’s creation.
Unfortunately, not much seems to be known about the success of the Secontrol watch, and neither do we exactly know if this watch was actually widely available and commercially viable for production. In Gisbert Brunner and Pfeiffer-Belli’s book, Swiss Wristwatches, there is a page which shows an Invicta advertising for the Secontrol, and based on this, one would conjecture that this watch might have probably been available for purchase, albeit with very little commercial success given its aforementioned limitations. Regardless, the watch goes on to show the existence of various novel ideas and lesser known inventors of the craft that existed in the earlier stages of 20th century watchmaking – and it is possibly this relentless pursuit of change through trial and error that has culminated in modern watchmaking as we know today.