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This is not a watch.
Swiss-American businessman Prosper Nordmann specialized in complex timing devices, supplying the Waltham Watch Company from New York City in the 1880s. He moved back to Geneva in 1896 to produce complicated movements for American and Swiss companies, leveraging the patents of Henry-Alfred Lugrin and others.
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Nordmann impressed the crowds at the 1896 Swiss National Exposition in Geneva with this chronographic clock designed for use at racetracks and velodromes. It had an electrical trigger for starting, stopping, and resetting the hands, which show the elapsed minutes and fifths of a second.
Nordmann won a silver medal and impressed none other than Jacques David, technical head of Longines, who noted that Nordmann's chronographs "are considered in the United States as very important."
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Nordmann's company moved to La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1901 soon after adopting the Electa brand. It was purchased by Gallet & Co. in 1907, which became a manufacture in its own right. For about a decade Gallet and Electa were two of the top brands in watchmaking, especially in the United States. Women loved their Lady Racine "chatelaine" watches and soldiers in World War 1 went into battle with sealed Gallet trench watches on "Bund" straps.
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But Gallet's Fabrique Electa bankrupted the company in 1924, forcing the famous company to re-start from scratch using outside suppliers like Excelsior Park, Valjoux, Venus, and Landeron.
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