252.032, Richard Lange Jumping Seconds, Pink Gold

This is the Richard Lange Jumping Seconds, ref. 252.032, a limited production of 100 pieces in pink gold with an argenté solid-silver dial. Introduced in 2017, it is the second iteration of a particularly technical model, following the platinum ref. 252.025 of 2016. The Richard Lange family has always emphasized precision timekeeping and the traditions of scientific observation. In this reference, Lange combines three distinct mechanisms in a single movement: a constant-force escapement, jumping seconds, and a zero-reset function. The result is a dial arrangement shaped by its mechanical purpose.

The jumping seconds complication has roots in the work of Ferdinand Adolph Lange, who conceived a pocket watch with a seconde morte, or dead seconds, mechanism in 1867. Ten years later, his sons Richard and Emil filed a patent placing the seconds wheel train above the three-quarter plate, an arrangement that allowed the mechanism to be removed without disassembling the movement. Watches of this kind were working instruments. Astronomers used them to record celestial passages, navigators to measure time intervals, and physicians to take pulses, because a hand that advances in full one-second steps can be read more precisely than one that sweeps. Richard, Ferdinand Adolph’s first-born son, filed 27 patent applications during his lifetime. The most notable was for adding beryllium to balance-spring alloys, a practice Lange says is still relied on in nearly all high-quality mechanical watches. The Richard Lange family, introduced in 2006 and named for him, focuses on precision and legibility and uses two dial layouts drawn from historic observation watches. The first reinterpreted Lange’s Large Observation Watch, two of which were sold to the Zeppelin yard in Friedrichshafen in 1935, where they were used for navigation and fuel reserve calculations. 

The second, used here, comes from Johann Heinrich Seyffert, a Dresden-based watchmaker and astronomer. His customers included Alexander von Humboldt, who took one of Seyffert’s chronometers on his expedition to Latin America. Seyffert’s pocket chronometer No. 93, completed in 1807, was the first watch to show hours, minutes, and seconds in three intersecting circles. Lange reverses the traditional regulator layout by giving the seconds the largest circle, at twelve o’clock, with hours and minutes in the two smaller subdials below. Where the three circles meet, a small power-reserve indicator turns from white to red ten hours before the movement runs down.

The pink gold case measures 39.9mm across and 10.6mm thick. Its solid-silver dial is finished in argenté, with pink gold hour and minute hands and a blued-steel seconds hand. The open caseback reveals the manually wound calibre L094.1, which consists of 390 components and 50 jewels and has a 42-hour power reserve. Its most important feature is the constant-force escapement, built around a spring-powered remontoir d’égalité. As the mainspring unwinds, its available torque gradually decreases. The remontoir addresses this by storing and releasing energy at one-second intervals, delivering consistent impulses to the escapement throughout the power reserve. In this movement, the same one-second release also drives the jumping seconds hand. The plates and bridges are made of untreated German silver, decorated with Glashütte ribbing, and fitted with eight screwed gold chatons and heat-blued screws. Each balance cock is engraved by hand, so no two are identical.

The Richard Lange Jumping Seconds draws on three parts of Lange’s history: Ferdinand Adolph Lange’s 1867 seconde morte, Richard Lange’s work on precision timekeeping, and Seyffert’s regulator-style dial. What sets ref. 252.032 apart within the model is its case: it is the only Richard Lange Jumping Seconds in pink gold, limited to 100 examples. Nearly 150 years after Richard and Emil Lange patented their jumping seconds, the watch named for Richard puts the complication to the same use: reading time to the exact second.

This 252.032 presents in good overall condition. It bezel, lug tops, midcase, and caseback are excellent. The lower lug tips and insides have some light marks from strap changes and having been set down. Its dial is flawless. The calibre L094 is running well within specification on our timing equpment. It comes with its full set.

This example is modelled on an average-sized 7-inch wrist.