Heuer Stopwatch information help.

Hello, first time poster. I’m looking for any information regarding a Heuer Temponoom Stopwatch. All my research has resulted in little to no information other than it may have been a limited run in the early 70’s. It was a gift given to my father around that time frame and we are both curious of it’s background. It has been well used and appreciated as you can tell be the pictures. Any information would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Bump: Anyone?

I know nothing of stopwatches, but a quick look doesn’t appear to show your stopwatch in any catalogues in the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s.

Temponoom was a name registered by Heuer, and clearly used by them just doesn’t seem to have been heavily advertised.

A little digging turned up the model is a 403.435 and the time period your father mentioned ties in with a sales receipt of 13-11-1967 I found for an identical piece. Below are the pics of said receipt and stopwatch.
I found them here: http://s1212.photobucket.com/user/OscarMeijer/library/?sort=3&page=1

I did one last bit of digging (I’m not sure why, but I did) and found a post on WUS from the guy that the above pictures are from. He’d replied to someone looking for one of these in 2011 who it appears knew quite a bit about them.


Apr 10, 2011 · #1
Heuer "temponome"

Hello I'm in the wild search for a very rare thing called a "Temponom" produced by HEUER in the early 70's or something.
The device looks like an oldfashioned stopwatch and is used by musicians to measure tempo. In a sense, it's the opposite of a metronome that gives you a specific tempo that you set it to beat - with this thing you measure your own tempo-feeling. Let's say you choose to sing tempo 104, then you start the temponome, sing 13 beats and stop it. Then (if your tempo-feeling is good) the needle has stopped on approx 104. I'm not a mathematic mind, so I can't explain how it works in detail, but this is more or less the concept.

The story is, that I work as a conductor (symphony orchestras - NOT trains!) and I recently met an old coleague who had inherited this temponome from a musician from Luzern, Switzerland. Apparently the musician once saw the legendary conductor Herbert von Karajan (who by the way was a big gadget-freak) coming out of a watchshop in Luzern. He was curious about what Karajan did in the shop, so he went in and asked the storekeeper. He told him that Karajan ordered 2 temponomes. So the musician immediately ordered one for himself! My coleague told me that he thinks that HEUER produced them especially for Herbert von Karajan, but then decided to make 20 instead of only 2. So maybe there's only produced 20 ever? I'm not sure...
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https://forums.watchuseek.com/f25/heuer-temponome-527365-print.html#/topics/527365?page=1

I’m guessing this is more than you had before 👍

@Gambba, Thank you for the replies and research it's greatIy appreciated. I had actually found the pictures with the reference #'s but that's as far as my search had taken me. The story on the other hand is quite interesting (I wonder how much truth there is in it) I had not found that. All I could dig up after finding the ref # was little to nothing other than references for A. Lange & Sohne. I'll have to pursue the story line further to see if there is any merit to it. Thanks again for your help.

Probably you have already found this, but I was investigating the Heuer 'media' models for some work I'm doing on the design and aesthetics of stopwatches, and I had come across this page in a 1968-69 catalogue. My initial interest was the 3 Film-Master models, and the Temponoom was a complete surprise - I'd never encountered it before.

I must admit I initially wondered if it had ever had any use by musicians, and the conductor's explanation above was really instructive about how it was employed - by some musicians at least.

The claims about a really limited run are perhaps doubtful, given it was in at least one catalogue.

I must admit I initially wondered if it had ever had any use by musicians, and the conductor's explanation above was really instructive about how it was employed - by some musicians at least.

The claims about a really limited run are perhaps doubtful, given it was in at least one catalogue.

@sokkan, Thank you and great information here, I had not seen this before. My father who is a composer/arranger used this stopwatch until the day he installed Logic Pro, so a good 30 years of use. He found it invaluable so my guess is anyone who used a paper and pencil may have thought the same. If you wanted an even more in depth explanation of its use for your research I could put you in touch with him as Im sure he'd be happy to talk to you about it.

Developed by Dick Krabbendam in the late sixties.