Born in the English county of Somerset in 1647, in 1671 Daniel Quare was admitted to the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers of the City of London, which confirms the quality of his production. His invention of a mechanism for pocket watches that sounds the hours and the quarters made him one of the very few makers of his day who were capable of producing repeater watches. Rev. Edward Barlow disputed the rights to the mechanism, which he intended to patent under his name. With the support of the Clockmakers’ Company, Quare took the matter before the king’s council and was subsequently granted patent rights in 1687.
Daniel Quare
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Daniel Quare invented a mechanism for pocket watches that sounds the hours and the quarters and introduced the minute hand in the latter part of the 17th century.
Around this time, in 1686, Daniel Quare presented a second breakthrough: a mechanism that drove two hands, one above the other, around the same central axis. In doing so, he made it possible to add a minute hand to the existing hour hand, thus giving the dial its familiar configuration (with the later addition of the seconds hand). This minute hand was gradually introduced to seventeenth-century timepieces and popularised during the eighteenth century.
c. 1680
Daniel Quare was one of the first makers to produce repeater watches, following his invention of a mechanism for pocket watches striking the hours and the quarters.
1686
Invention of a mechanism that drives hour and minute hands on the same axis.