Although this movement has been restored with numerous new parts, it retains its paramount importance as a typical hybrid movement between a lantern clock and a Comtoise clock.
The hands, dial with base plate and cast decoration are new. The back, doors and bell are new. The change wheel and the hour wheel of the gear train itself have been renewed. The spindle axle is new. It could also have been stated that only the cage with the two wheel sets is original to this clock, with a renewed verge axle. This movement was probably restored in the 20th century and brought into its present form. Apparently all *old* screws were replaced by *new* screws, except for the 4 large nuts on the movement pillars. There are only metric bolts with round heads or cylinder heads.
The wooden parts on the distinctive crown wheel, which acts as a windscreen (this *windscreen* is also extremely unusual) have been replaced.
The heavy, forged cage has reinforcements/thickenings at the upper and lower ends of the cage pillars, which are visually reminiscent of the pillars of English or French lantern clocks in brass construction.
With its striking large nuts on the upper movement pillars and the pillars with wider ends, the movement is reminiscent at first glance of the roughly forged cage of a lantern clock. However, the adjacent wheel sets point the way towards a later Comtoise clock.
It is not only the wheel sets that point in this direction, but also the rack striking mechanism with its vertically falling rack. The rack striking train alone qualifies this 17th century hybrid movement as a special rarity.
As the movement has a rack striking mechanism, it can only have been created around 1680/1690. This special rarity is also due to the fact that the rake of this clock is U-shaped with double teeth. Edward Barlow in England is said to have been the inventor of the rack striking mechanism, but his rack was certainly the arch-shaped rack that we all know from the English plate movements found in floor clocks.
In the earliest examples of Haut-Jura Comtoise clocks, the vertical rake is found in the earliest examples; the curved rake is also found, but much less frequently.
The really special feature of this hybrid movement between a lantern clock and a Comtoise clock is this vertically falling rake, then still in the U-shaped version, from a time when there were no Haut-Jura Comtoise clocks, i.e. from around 1680 at the earliest and around 1690 at the latest, i.e. around 20/30 years before the first appearance of the Haut-Jura Comtoise around 1710.
Unfortunately, we do not know who the inventor of the vertically falling rake with a single rack was.
Unfortunately, we also do not know who invented the vertically falling rake with a U-shaped rack.
What we do know, however, is that both types of rake already existed when the Mayet and other clockmakers/smiths in the High Jura began to build the first domestic clocks.
