Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox Parking Steel, 1960s

Identity

Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox Parking, 1960s. Mechanical hand-wound movement. Steel case, 35 mm diameter, twin crowns — the upper one for the alarm, the lower one for the time. Dial that has developed a beautiful honey patina, Jaeger-LeCoultre signature at 12 o'clock, applied Arabic numerals at 12, 3, 6 and 9, applied baton indexes at the other positions, gold dauphine hands with tritium traces, central disc graduated for parking time. Plexiglas crystal. Leather strap and unsigned steel pin buckle.

Horological context

The Memovox was launched by Jaeger-LeCoultre in 1950. Its name — from the Latin memor (memory) and vox (voice) — speaks to its function: a mechanical alarm wristwatch, a complication that until then had belonged to clocks and pocket watches. It quickly took its place among the great complications of the twentieth century, and from 1956 onwards received its first self-winding alarm movements, declined thereafter with or without date. Its architecture is unmistakable: two crowns stacked on the right side of the case, one for the time, the other for the alarm. Its sound has become its signature — a small internal hammer strikes the case, which acts as a resonance chamber, producing a soft metallic chime, clearly audible, often likened to the song of a cricket. Over the decades the line has taken many forms: the manual Memovox, the Automatic, the Réveil, the Parking with its parking-time disc, the World Time, and the Polaris divers'. Part of the manufacture's output was also destined for the American market: these pieces, technically identical to their Swiss counterparts, bore the LeCoultre signature alone on the dial.

Character

A commemorative edition created by Jaeger-LeCoultre in 1958 for the manufacture's 125th anniversary, the Memovox Parking carries on its dial a central disc graduated not for a conventional alarm but for parking time. Relics of an era — the rise of parking meters in mid-twentieth-century Western cities — translated into watchmaking by an ingenious and now charmingly obsolete elegance of use. A collector's reference today if ever there was one.

Watch serviced. Dial with pronounced patina, normal signs of wear. Delivered with a Contre-Temps box and the Contre-Temps 24-month warranty certificate.