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The chiming repeater does not signal the minutes and the quarter hours strike differently from the minute repeater.
What does this sentence mean? Is there no difference between "the chiming repeater's signaling the minutes and the quarter hours strike" and "the minute repeater's signaling the minutes and the quarter hours strike "? Or is there little difference between the two?
The chiming repeater does not signal the minutes and the quarter hours strike differently from the minute repeater.
There are two sentences here:
and
The watch probably combines a mechanism striking a sound each 15 minutes with two "repeater" mechanisms: one only giving the number of hours, the other ("minute repeater") giving the time to the minute (using different sounds for hours/quarters/minutes).
The chiming repeater does not X differently from the minute repeater
The sentence is saying the chiming repeater and the minute repeater each do X in the same way, where X is:
signal the minutes and the quarter hours strike
The sentence is literally saying there is no difference between how the two repeaters do X.
Though this is a bad sentence. The sentence could be interpreted this way:
The chiming repeater does not signal the minutes
and
the quarter hours strike differently from the minute repeater.
I'm assuming this is not the case since there is no comma after minutes, but it could still mean either thing as written.
EDIT: Thinking about it, strike isn't overly commonly used as a noun, so maybe this second interpretation should be assumed correct. It's a really bad sentence.
