The earliest watches recorded in Cartier inventories date from 1853, when Cartier was buying pocket watches from outside manufacturers or buying historical items at auction (such as a Louis XIV silver pocket watch and pieces made by A.L. Breguet) for their connoisseur clients. In his book Cartier, Jewelers Extraordinary Hans Nadelhoffer, the late head of Christie's, Geneva, discusses Cartier's watch and clock makers in chapter 16, "The Jeweled Flight of Time" and their unrivalled successes in creating timepieces that were horologically significant objets d'arts. Louis Cartier, man of vision and energy, set unequalled standards of elegance and quality for the pieces produced in-house or by the Cartier subsidiary, the European Watch and Clock Company, who finished and exported items for Cartier beginning in 1919.
Le Temps du Cartier by Barracca, Negretti, and Nencini illustrates a simple chronograph pocket watch by the European Watch and Clock company (page 90) c. 1925 which has a case and dial similar to this piece. The more complicated version, the rare split chronograph, c. 1922, is illustrated on page 326.

This piece, incorporating the luxury feature of a minute-repeating chiming device with the rare split chronograph mechanism, is a previously unrecorded watch. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this watch is one of only three made to special order by an Imperial client of Cartier's.