Take A Leap of Time With Jumping Hour Watches

We have all grown up looking at time on our watches in a certain way. The short hand that moves the slowest for the hour, the longer one for the minutes and of course the longest one that keeps moving predominantly around the dial represnts the seconds. Globally this is the way almost all watches displayed time since years and still display time‌ the same way, It seems to be one of those pillars of watchmaking impossible to change.

Certain watchmakers, however, challenged this arrangement and came up with a radically different way of displaying time by creating Jumping hour watches.

What exactly is a jumping hour watch?

On watches with a jump hour complication, the hour hand does not sweep gracefully between the hours. Rather than that, it points exactly to the current hour and advances to the next hour upon the 60th minute of the current hour expiring. Jumping-hour watches are unique timepieces, as a simple look at the dial demonstrates. Rather than using conventional hands, they use a set of discs in varying configurations that jump at particular transitions, hence the name. This may seem to be a simple date window, but it is really pretty sophisticated and demands a substantial lot of power. When the hour changes, a disc leaps from one hour to the next, landing precisely in the aperture's centre. 

A jumpy road

Despite its longevity of almost a century, the jumping hour method of indicating time has met with mixed results.

It acquired popularity in the early twentieth century, when companies like Cartier, Patek Philippe, and Audemars Piguet adopted the rebellious spirit symbolised by leap hour clocks, which suited the atmosphere of the period. Gary Cooper and Duke Ellington, two innovative inventors, immediately welcomed the concept. They subsequently seemed to disappear completely, only to reappearance decades later, when brands and independent watchmakers chose a more contrarian position once again. The leap hour would be reinstated by Daniel Roth, Vianney Halter, MB&F, DeBethune, and François-Paul Journe, among others.

However, several outstanding luxury timepieces have included the jumping hour display within their timekeeping repertory. 

You can check some of the most amazing jumping hour watches, currently available, below:

MeisterSinger Salthora Meta X

MeisterSinger of Germany, famed for its single-hand watches, introduced the Salthora series in 2014. The sporty Meta X model — a Red Dot Design Award winner — has a 43-mm stainless steel case with a 200-meter water resistance rating and a unidirectional bezel with a 60-minute scale etched on a ceramic bezel inlay. Automatic movement — either an ETA 2824-2 or a Sellita SW 200-1 — with an in-house module for the leaping hour powers the watch.

Bulgari Gérald Genta 50th Anniversary Arena Bi-Retro Watch

Gérald Genta, the legendary watch designer, created masterpieces such as the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and Patek Philippe Nautilus before launching his own namesake brand in 1969. The 50th Anniversary version has a blue lacquered dial with a leaping hour numeral at 12 o'clock and minutes and date shown on two retrograde hands, a timekeeping design that was a characteristic of pre-Bulgari Gérald Genta watches. 

Reservoir Hydrosphere Air Gauge

Reservoir's first diver's watch is water resistant to 250 metres in professional-grade conditions and has a helium release valve for saturation diving. The 45-mm brushed steel case has a lugless design and a rubber-coated screw-down crown. The dial is completely bright. The ceramic bezel is equipped with two 15-minute indications, allowing the user to read diving times recorded by the retrograde hand.

Andersen Genève Jumping Hours 40th

Andersen Genève jubilee version is an exquisite "magic losange" guilloché design. While all guilloché is challenging labour, this design is exceptionally complex due to the pattern being created using three distinct machines. Hours are shown by an aperture at 12 o'clock, while minutes are indicated by a discrete subdial at 6 o'clock. As one would assume, the blue dial is not enamel, but rather the brand's distinctive 21K blue gold. It is encased in platinum and has a 60-hour power reserve.

Bulgari High-jewelry Jumping-hour Watch

Bulgari High-jewelry Jumping-hour Watch has a stunning diamond-set dial with a swirling, three-dimensional pattern studded with large emeralds, while the bezel is also set with diamonds. It mixes leaping hours and backward minutes. The hours are shown through an aperture at 12 o'clock, while the minutes are displayed on the dial's bottom half.

Bovet Virtuoso V

Bovet's jumping-hour timepiece may be worn on the wrist in either direction, as a pocket watch, or as a table clock. It serves as a showcase for its métiers d'art and excellent movements. It has retrograde minutes at 12 o'clock in the form of a little minutes track and a date aperture in the dial's centre. The remainder of the dial is used by its artists to create exquisite works of art, including guilloché and ornate engraving. Perhaps most striking is the watch's five-day battery reserve. The Virtuoso V is part of the transformable Amedeo line. 

Gérald Genta Arena Bi-Retrograde Sport

Gérald Genta is a timepiece icon who has pioneered the concept of combining leaping hours with retrograde minutes. The Gérald Genta Arena Bi-Retrograde Sport was introduced in 2020 and has a jump-hour aperture at 12 o'clock and retrograde minutes running down the dial's top. The term "bi-retrograde" refers to the retrograde minutes and date functions at 6 o'clock. When the clock strikes 12 a.m. on the 31st, the date will instantly reset to 1. (If the month finishes in 28 or 30, the date must be manually adjusted.) It has a titanium casing, a black dial, and vibrant yellow accents.