The Rise Of The Jumping Hour

While this complication has long enjoyed cult status among collectors, this year saw a notable resurgence of the quaint jumping hour complication. Three standouts made the case for its contemporary relevance.

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With jumping hours, the hour is displayed digitally, typically through a small aperture, and jumps crisply to the next at the exact stroke of the hour. The hour mechanism must be held in tension and then released with precise force, ensuring that the numeral changes instantaneously. Some variants even pair this with a retrograde minute hand that travels across an arc before snapping back to zero, adding a satisfying layer of drama. At this year's fair, the jumping hour was both a technical choice and design statement. Several standout pieces leaned into the guichet theme, named after the French word for "ticket window," where the hour appears in a cut-out window that evokes vintage timekeeping displays from the early 20th cen