VERÍSSIMO ALVES PEREIRA - SÉC. XIX A Universal Time Clock metal cylinder lined with engraving on paper "World Map" Brazilian rosewood and metal stand, top with terracotta sculpture "Chronos" (the Time), map dated 186?, 8-day going English type movement, pin-wheel escapement, strikes hours and half-hours, two weights Portuguese mechanism requiring maintenance, small faults and defects map with handwritten inscription "Veríssimo Alves Pereira inventou e fêz Lisbôa" Dimensões (altura x comprimento x largura) - 225 x 54,5 x 54,5 cm Notes: According to Fernando Correia de Oliveira, researcher and author of several books about Time, Veríssimo Alves Pereira, born in Oporto, was a watchmaker in the second half of the 19th century. Besides his "Universal Time" watches, he invented and built "meridians" (special mechanisms that, at solar noon time, made bells ring and cannon fire so that people could heard and set their clocks).
He was a teacher of watchmaking at the Casa Pia in Lisbon and partner at Relógios de Torre Factory, founded in 1870 in Lisbon. He was also a Technical Director at Precision Tools Factory of the Instituto Industrial e Comercial of Lisbon, founded in 1852 by Fontes Pereira de Melo and which is at the foundatin of the Instituto Superior Técnico. One of the competences of this Factory was the supply and maintenance of precision devices, including chronometers, to all the scientific government facilities.
Veríssimo Alves Pereira was a member of the Associação Industrial Portuense and worked at the Revista Universal Lisbonense - Por uma Sociedade Estudiosa (1862-1853) with headquarters at Rua dos Fanqueiros, 82. He was one of the most active members of the Associação Promotora da Indústria Fabril, founded in 1837, which is at the origin of the Associação Industrial Portuguesa.
Veríssimo Alves Pereira had an establishment, downtown Lisbon, of musical instruments of his own making, and it is known that he traded water meters also invented by him.
Veríssimo Alves Pereira has made at least two more watches similar to this one, known to be the first. Numbered 2 and 3, they are exhibited at the Museu da Fundação Portuguesa das Comunicações.
The "World Map" that wraps the cylinder, dated 1868 (there are some doubts as to the last digit), is rich in information and presents several engavings that portrait the human activity in different parts of the planet. In a nink handwritten inscription one may read "Veríssimo Alves Pereira invented and made - Lisbon". The reference meridian (zero degrees of longitude) is that of Paris, given the fact that only in 1911 France started to follow Greenwich's (Portugal adopted the Greenwich meridian from January 1,1912).
Júlio Castilho, in his "Old Lisbon" book says that this curious character «had always some project, some useful invention, some industrial facilitaton, some new mechanical application" on his mind, and that, as every inventor use to do "explained in prolix terms to whom he met, the advantages of such or such device, the details of such and such gear, no matter if his interlocutor shared his point of view or agreed to his ideas».
Luís Couto Soares, Maio de 2018