Most mechanical watches emit a sound of some sort. Some tick modestly, yet others quite noticeably. This is not really on purpose, but more the way that they are constructed. There is, however, a category of watches that are designed to make a sound. Some chime the time, others have an audible alarm, but all are without exception fitted with a beautiful and complex movement, such as the following four watches.

The history of the minute repeater goes back to a time before electric light. As lighting an oil lamp was quite some work, watchmakers build repeating mechanisms in pocket watches so that they could sound the time on demand. The invention of the minute repeater was claimed by both Edward Barlow and Daniel Quare, but it was Quare who obtained a patent for it in 1687. Initially, watches equipped with a repeating mechanism used bells to chime the time, later to be replaced with wire gong, which took up less space. These weren't minute repeaters, at first, but quarter repeaters, chiming the time to the closest quarter.

By Martin Green It is hard to surpass a watch like the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Tourbillon. Its style is subtle, yet distinctly Bulgari, Roman flair combined with the finest in Swiss watchmaking. That last part, that remarkable ultra-thin tourbillon, with a height of only 1.95 mm has always been hidden behind a dial with only an opening for the tourbillon. That is now about to change with the new skeleton version of this extraordinary watch.