Front, Dial without bezel,
Back, Case Mark, Movement,
Second view of movement, Third
view of movement, Back of dial, Back
of dial low angle, Dial showing hand positions,
Hands, Second pinion, Second
pinion with hand, Second pinion close, Second
pinion, Second pinion face view, Under
Dial, Second view under dial, Third
view under dial, Fourth view under dial, Close-up
view under dial, Second close-up view under
dial
Borresen worked for the McIntyre Watch Co. and patented a new time indication with the second hand placed in the center of the dial below the hour and minute hands. The advantage of this design was that the hour and minute hands could not hang up on the second hand as they can with the conventional placement of the second hand at 6:00. By placing the second hand below the slower moving hands, it is also less likely to get hung up on either of them than a conventional center second hand is.
DeLong made a model watch for Borresen's patent and presumably also made a small group of watches converted from other existing movements. Some of these conversions have dials marked O'Hara although this example does not. I know of 4 other examples of this watch. Borresen's patent model, an Aggasiz example and two other Hamilton 992 conversions. One of the 992 conversions has the second hand placed as a conventional sweep second and the other has the second hand placed between the hour and minute hands. The top placement would not conform to the Borresen patent and may have been intended as a demonstration. The middle placement can be achieved by reversing the order of the two cannon pinions, but places both the hour and second hand in the sunken center. The watches are illustrated in Ehrhardt's 1978 Indicator pg. 89 and 1979 Indicator pg. 100.
The motion work for the second hand drives off the third wheel with a secondary drive wheel under the dial. The cannon pinion for the second hand is equivalent to the pinion on the fourth wheel in the watch train. The cannon pinion carrying the second hand is highly polished steel and the hour hand cannon pinion is polished brass. The two form an inside-out bushing and are obviously intended to reduce the friction for the second hand. When the second hand and hour hand are reversed, the second hand cannon pinion lies between the center arbor carrying the minute hand and the hour hand cannon pinion and therefore has two friction surfaces rather than one. It seems very likely that the form found on this watch was intended as the production version.
After the collapse of the McIntyre Watch Co. Borresen patented a safety barrel that likely figured in the litigation between the receivers of the company and the Hamilton Watch Co. The patent may be seen at the link on the left.