Guba Watch Movements from Germany

Guba in Ellmendingen near Pforzheim was a German manufacturer of watch movements about which hardly anything is known. Here we take a look at the little that is known.

The history of Guba Uhrenrohwerke (watch movements) began in 1924, when the goldsmith Hermann Friedrich Bauer and his sons founded a company in Pforzheim to manufacture gold watch straps, followed a little later by gold watch cases.

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A Dead Beat Seconds Movement – 140 Years old

Every quartz watch has a jumping second, so the second hand always moves in whole second increments. This is in contrast to the mechanical watch, where the oscillation frequency of the balance determines how many small steps the hand takes between two second strokes. In classic movements, it’s 18,000 bph (beats per hour), which results in five steps per second; in the more modern 28,800 bph of an ETA 2824-2, it’s eight. This is called sweeping second.

Jumping second (repeats after 15 seconds, otherwise the file will be too big…)

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Identifying Watch Movements with the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce

Catalogs for identifying watch movements exist from about 1930 on. The oldest catalog I know of is from Ebauches SA in 1928. But how can you identify even older movements?

Malleray Model Nr. 6, 1909

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