Alarm Watches: A Complete Guide to the Most Underappreciated Watch Complication

If we're ranking watch styles by everyday practicality, it's hard to beat the alarm watch. Most of us are regularly needing reminders of appointments, events, and other commitments, and to have the source of such audible alerts right on your wrist, rather than buried in a pocket or a handbag, would seem to be the height of practicality even in today's high-tech world. Around the middle of the 20th Century, many watchmakers agreed and began to embrace the style, but alarm watches never achieved anywhere near the widespread popularity of other complications like chronographs and GMTs. Nevertheless, the alarm watch has played a significant role in horological history, and a handful of important brands have not only been instrumental in its creation and development but continue to rely on it as a major pillar of their collections today. Here is the story of how the mechanical alarm watch came to be, how it became a signature style of certain watchmakers, and how it continues to evolve today despite its niche status in the industry. 

Johannes Dürrstein, regarded as the inventor of the alarm watch 

Watches with alarm functions go back farther into horological history than most probably realize. Johannes Dürrsstein, a watchmaker in Glashütte, Germany, invented the first mass-produced, alarm-equipped pocket watch caliber in 1900. Dürrstein’s invention used an extra-long mainspring that could fuel both the timekeeping and the independent alarm hand, which was activated by a notched cam hidden under the dial. When the set time was reached, the cam impacted a lever that released energy from the mainspring to move a hammer that struck a membrane to create sound, for a duration up to 30 seconds. 

Eterna alarm wristwatch, circa 1914

This invention was the baseline for all of the alarm-equipped movements that would follow, including the first wristwatch version, made by the Swiss brand Eterna in 1914. That watch’s movement, which was patented in 1908 several years before it was cased in a commercial watch, had some limitations compared to those in use today. Based on Dürrstein’s movement but resized for a smaller wristwatch case, it had some serious limitations. It required a single, small barrel to power both the timekeeping and the dedicated alarm function, so the alarm could only sound for six to seven seconds. Also, the alarm could only be set within the current 12-hour period rather than a 24-hour range, and the alarm’s vibrations could negatively affect the watch’s timekeeping accuracy. Eterna made modifications to the movement over the ensuing years but eased itself out of the alarm-watch game by the late 1930s.

Early Vulcain Cricket (photo via Analog:Shift)

The mechanical alarm didn’t really get off the ground as a mainstream product until 1947, when another historical Swiss watchmaking maison, Vulcain, launched the aptly named Cricket, which was equipped with a much more optimized movement, the hand-wound Caliber 120. This movement incorporated separate barrels for the timekeeping and the alarm functions, activated by a single bidirectional crown, which meant that activating the alarm would not draw energy from the main movement, and that the alarm itself, when fully wound, could sound for up to 25 seconds. The Cricket also solved another issue that had plagued previous alarm calibers: how to amplify the sound of the alarm so that it would actually be audible if the watch was not being worn, i.e., on a nightstand near a dozing owner. Here’s where Vulcain turned to the insect for which the watch is named, and its long-distance chirping ability, for inspiration. Physicist Paul Langevin, who was brought in by Vulcain president Robert Ditisheim to assist in the project, hit upon the idea of using a tiny hammer to strike a membrane, sending vibrations that would be amplified by a perforated caseback acting as an echo chamber. The resulting high-pitched sound approximated the throaty, high-pitched calls of a Cricket and gave the watch its name. 

The Vulcain Cricket won the Chronometry Prize at the Neuchâtel Observatory in the year it was introduced, and went on to become Vulcain’s undisputed signature model. The line expanded to include an alarm-equipped dive watch, the Cricket Nautical, in 1961, and a smaller, feminine offshoot, the Golden Voice, in 1964. 

The Cricket’s place in horological history is secured not only by its groundbreaking alarm technology but by its well-established status as the watch of United States Presidents. Like Rolex’s Day-Date model, the Cricket has been widely nicknamed “The President” — modern versions of the watch even put the name on the dial — and the Cricket may even have the more convincing claim to the title. In 1953, President Harry S. Truman received a specially engraved Vulcain Cricket from the White House Press Photographers’ Association and regularly wore it in photos. Truman’s successors, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, also wore Cricket watches that were given as official gifts, and Lyndon Johnson, who bought one for himself on a visit to Switzerland, loved the watch so much that he ordered 200 more to give away as gifts during his term; legend has it LBJ would set the alarm to go off when he wanted to duck out of meetings. Since the 1980s, Finnish jeweler Keijo Paajanen has been gifting Vulcain Crickets to U.S. presidents (and even former presidents) during state visits to Finland. Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Obama have all acquired their own President watches from Vulcain and Paajanen. 

The other Swiss watchmaker most associated with the mechanical alarm watch is Jaeger-LeCoultre, which introduced its revolutionary Memovox watch in 1951 and has been improving upon it ever since. The name comes from the Latin “Memor” and “Vox” and means “the voice of memory.” Powering the watch was the manually wound Caliber 489, which added a new level of user-friendliness by utilizing two crowns — one to wind and set the alarm, the other to wind the movement itself — and a different approach to design and utility. The dial incorporated a rotating disk, operated by the additional crown, as a second, inner dial for the alarm setting, which made the entire display more legible.

Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox Parking (1958)

The first Memovox was marketed as a watch for businessmen, who Jaeger-LeCoultre reasoned would use the alarm function to remind them of meetings and appointments. As such, it was positioned as a competitor to the Vulcain Cricket, which had already staked out this territory. But Jaeger-LeCoultre continued to make advancements to the Memovox’s design and its functionality. In 1956, the manufacture debuted the Memovox Automatic, the first alarm watch operated by a self-winding movement. Technically, the groundbreaking Caliber 815 still required manual winding of the alarm function but the watch itself derived its power from the motions of the wearer’s wrist, a world-first for an alarm-equipped movement. Unlike most automatic movements today, Caliber 815 used a pendulum-like “bumper” architecture to wind the mainspring rather than the more common 360º swinging rotor system: the alarm hammer needed to strike the inside of the caseback and the latter's large oscillating weight would have gotten in the way. Jaeger-LeCoultre continued to tool with the Memovox’s utilitarian possibilities, introducing the Memovox Parking model in 1958. Just as its name implies, the watch had a patented alarm disk with 30-minute, 60-minute, and 2-hour setting increments, which could help the owner avoid parking tickets by alerting him to the expiration of a pre-set parking time.

In 1959, Jaeger-LeCoultre took its “wrist alarm” (the original name used in advertisements) from the boardroom to the ocean depths with the launch of Memovox Ref. E587, aka the Deep Sea Alarm Automatic. Equipped with the same Caliber 815 as its predecessor, but here housing that movement inside a 200-meter water-resistant case, it was the first purpose-built dive watch with an alarm function — the raison d’ètre being that the vibrations of the alarm on the wrist would remind a diver when it was time to resurface when his oxygen supply was getting low.

The next generation of this concept arrived in 1965; the Memovox Polaris (Ref. E589), which contained the automatic “bumper” Caliber 825, combined an alarm function with a “compressor” dive watch design, in which a dedicated crown could operate an internal, bidirectionally rotating dive-scale bezel, an alternative to the external, unidirectional bezels that were moved and set by hand. This meant that the Memovox Polaris (which was revamped in 1968 to the model that is most recognizable today) was the first Memovox with three rather than two crowns. The “triple” theme carried over to the three-layered 42mm case, which had an inner case for the movement, a brass core for the alarm’s resonator, and an outer shell with drilled holes to allow the sound’s vibrations to escape so that, in essence, a diver wearing the watch would not only hear the alert but feel it, even through a wetsuit. 

While the Vulcain Cricket and Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox were both evolving to meet the needs of the latter half of the 20th Century, a handful of other watchmakers offered their own takes on the alarm watch, whose heyday of popularity had peaked in the years before the Quartz Crisis of the 1970s and ‘80s. One was Rolex-owned Tudor, which introduced its Advisor alarm model in 1957. It was equipped with a third-party movement by Adolphe Schild SA, which also made its way into other models by Bulova, Gruen, Omega, and others, and provided the Advisor with an additional useful feature: an “on/off” button that could engage and disengage the alarm function. Despite this useful utility, and an attractive design, the Advisor never really put up much of a competition to Vulcain or JLC, partially because the Rolex Oyster case that the earliest models used was not all that conducive to amplifying sound. The Advisor did remain in Tudor’s portfolio as sort of a niche novelty, however, right up until the early 2020s.

As we enter the third decade of the 21st Century, the mechanical alarm watch occupies a niche within the overall luxury watch universe that is undeniably small and specialized but which also lends itself to some very creative interpretations by some of the world’s most respected watchmakers, including but not limited to the two brands that helped pioneer the genre more than seventy years ago. Here is a curated list of several of the most noteworthy alarm watches on the market today. 

Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Control Memovox Timer

Price: $14,300, Case Size: 40mm, Thickness: 12.39mm, Lug Width: 20mm, Crystal: Sapphire, Water Resistance: 50 meters, Movement: Automatic Jaeger-LeCoultre Caliber 956

The inventor of the Memovox pays tribute to some of its earliest iterations with the Master Control Memovox Timer, which joined the contemporary Master Control collection in 2020. Blending both vintage and contemporary elements, the watch has a sunray-brushed dial with triangular indices and Arabic numerals, Dauphine hands, and a “sector” dial layout with shades of blue and gray on concentrically arranged rings. The 40-mm steel case has brushed and polished sections and a true rarity for an alarm watch: a sapphire window in the caseback that allows the owner to see the tiny hammer striking the gongs inside when the alarm sounds. Jaeger-LeCoultre re-engineered the alarm mechanism in the automatic Caliber 956 so that the gongs are attached to the inside of the case rather than the back, and also enabled it to be set based on a predetermined number of hours as well as on a specific time. Both indicators are linked, so whichever method is chosen, the indicator for the other will move to its corresponding position on the dial simultaneously. Like every movement installed in the Master Control family of watches, Caliber 956, whose alarm striking mechanism is tuned to evoke the sound of a miniature “school bell,” has been tested to meet the strict  criteria for Jaeger-LeCoultre’s in-house 1,000 Hours certification.

Jaeger-LeCoultre Polaris Mariner Memovox

Price: $20,600, Case Size: 42mm, Thickness: 15.63mm, Crystal: Sapphire, Water Resistance: 300 meters, Movement: Automatic Jaeger-LeCoultre Caliber 956

The other modern version of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s original wrist alarm occupies a place of pride in the sporty Polaris collection, whose unifying aesthetic elements — triple-ring sector dials, dual and triple crowns — hearken back to the 1968 alarm-equipped Polaris dive watch. The Polaris Memovox closely channels the look and feel of the original, with vintage-inspired Arabic numerals, contrasting finishes in its concentric circular areas, and luminous-coated trapezoidal hands. The inner rotating 60-minute flange that controls the alarm setting is operated via a dedicated crown. The modern Caliber 956, a direct descendant of the maison’s very first self-winding alarm movement, finds a home here as it does in the Master Control model. Its three screw-down crowns work in tandem to provide alarm setting and accurate timekeeping: the top one winds the dedicated alarm barrel and sets the alarm when it’s pulled out, the middle one adjusts the alarm time on the inner flange, and the bottom one pulls out to adjust the hour and minute hands. The movement also supplies a “quick-change” date indicator and stores a power reserve of 45 hours. Perhaps most importantly for purists, the Mariner Memovox can dive the depths like its 1960s predecessors, with a steel case water-resistant to 300 meters.

Vulcain Cricket “President”

Price: CHF4,400, Case Size: 39mm, Crystal: Sapphire, Water Resistance: 50 meters, Movement: Manually wound Vulcain Caliber V-10

Vulcain continues to release new models of the Cricket, which holds the title of the oldest mechanical alarm watch still in production today. Most recently, the brand rolled out a series of “President” limited editions in an expanded palette of contemporary dial colors — 100 pieces each in 39mm steel cases, 50 each in the more unisex 36mm sizes. The dials are in black, silver, blue, pistachio green and pale salmon, with applied hour markers and Dauphine hands. Inside each watch is Vulcain’s in-house-made manufacture Caliber V-10, the successor to the historic Caliber 120, which is manually wound to supply energy to the alarm, which chimes for a full 20 seconds, in its dedicated spring barrel while also supplying 42 hours of running autonomy to the watch itself. The additional, slim arrow-pointed hand on the dial is used to indicate the alarm setting on the outer scale; the alarm is set and operated via the crown and the pump-style pusher above it on the side of the case. The Cricket “Presidents Watch” models are all mounted on color-coordinated leather straps. 

Breguet Marine Alarme Musicale

Price: $70,700, Case Size: 40mm, Thickness: 13.05mm, Crystal: Sapphire, Water Resistance: 50 meters, Movement: Automatic Breguet Caliber 519F/1

Breguet offers an elegantly appointed alarm timepiece in its nautically inspired Marine collection, which evokes the historical spirit of its founder, Abraham-Louis Breguet, and his role as official chronometer maker for the French Royal Navy in the 1800s. The Breguet Marine Alarme Musicale 5547 comes in a 40mm case made of titanium or gold, and its shiny sunburst blue dial hosts an array of indications, including a subdial at 3 o’clock to display the alarm setting, a 24-hour subdial at 9 o’clock, an aperture at 12 o’clock that reveals the “on” or “off” status of the alarm, and a hand indicating the alarm function’s remaining power reserve between 9 and 12 o’clock — represented here, like all the hours, on Roman numeral appliqués. Breguet installs one of its many in-house calibers in the Marine Alarme Musicale, specifically the automatic Caliber 519F/1, which features separate spring barrels for the alarm’s striking mechanism and the main movement and employs a push-button on the lower left side of the case to set the alarm.

Blancpain Villeret Reveil GMT

Price: $26,400, Case Size: 40.3mm, Thickness: 12.10mm, Lug Width: 22mm, Crystal: Sapphire, Water Resistance: 30 meters, Movement: Automatic Blancpain Caliber 1240H

One of the many multiple-complication timepieces within Blancpain’s classically elegant Villeret collection, the Reveil GMT combines a mechanical alarm (“reveil” translates to “awakening,” or, more colloquially, “alarm clock”) and a dual-time indication. The subdial at 3 o’clock, with 12 hour markers and two hands, displays the time programmed for the alarm, which is set using a push-piece at 8 o’clock. Similar to a chronograph, the movement’s alarm mechanism uses a column wheel, and is designed to be switched on and off, as indicated by the little alarm bell icon in the small aperture beneath 12 o’clock. Like the much more complex and more expensive minute repeater function, the alarm’s sound is generated by a hammer striking a gong. Also present on the streamlined dial is a central, serpentine GMT hand that indicates the 24-hour time in a second time zone. The movement is Blancpain’s in-house Caliber 1240H, equipped with two barrels — one for the movement, the other for the alarm’s striking mechanism — that are wound simultaneously by the automatic winding system.

Richard Mille RM62-01 Tourbillon ACJ

Price: $1,845,760 Case Size: 49.94mm x 43mm, Crystal: Sapphire, Water Resistance: 50 meters, Movement: Automatic Caliber RM62-01

At the highest echelon of both mechanical complexity and price in this category is the RM62-01 Tourbillon ACJ from (you guessed it) Richard Mille, developed in partnership with Airbus Corporate Jets, maker of bespoke private aircraft. In fact, to call it just the watch world’s most complicated alarm watch might be damning it with faint praise. The watch’s signature innovation is a silent, non-audible alarm built into the 816-piece movement, which alerts its wearer to a pre-set time more in the manner of a mobile phone with the ringer sound turned off than in that of a traditional alarm clock. Unlike a mobile phone, however, the RM62-10 accomplishes this through purely mechanical, rather than electronic means. Activated not by turning a crown but by pressing a pusher, it transmits a vibrating signal that only its wearer can perceive rather than using a hammer striking a gong, making this watch’s alarm the most discreet and non-disruptive you can find in a wristwatch. Of course, this being a Richard Mille, the silent alarm is only the tip of the technical iceberg. Also built into the movement are a tourbillon, a UTC indicator, an oversize date display, an indicator for the 70-hour power reserve, and a function selector with five settings, including three alone for the alarm. Perhaps the fact that such an industry leader in innovative complications hasn't given up on the venerable and not-actually-all-that-obsolete mechanical alarm complication should give fans of this niche and underrated genre (like your humble author, it it wasn't obvious by this point) hope that other brands might follow suit in the future.