Chapter VI · Act II — Making Time
The Age of Genius
1750–1830
A handful of watchmakers invent almost everything that defines fine watchmaking today.
In less than a century, a handful of watchmakers solve almost everything that defines fine watchmaking today. Among them, Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747–1823) signs a list of inventions still made today.
The tourbillon
Second 00
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A tourbillon, after Breguet’s patent of 7 Messidor Year IX (26 June 1801). Here the cage turns once a minute, as most tourbillons do today, in step with your clock.
- 1Cage
- 2Balance and spring
- 3Escapement
- 4Fixed wheel
The balance swings and the escapement keeps it going. In a pocket watch, upright all day, gravity pulls the balance to one side.
Breguet mounts the whole escapement in a cage that keeps turning: the errors of each upright position cancel out every turn.
The wheel below is fixed: the escape pinion rolls round it as the cage turns.
The cage’s pointer marks the seconds of your clock. Stand it upright, as in a pocket, and watch it keep turning.
Inventions and masterpieces
c. 1754
The lever escapement
Thomas Mudge devises it about 1754 and first uses it in 1769. Improved since, from about 1900 it is in almost every portable mechanical timepiece.
c. 1780
The perpétuelle
About 1779 Breguet learns of Abraham-Louis Perrelet’s self-winding watches, of 1776 or 1777, and improves them: a weight that swings as the wearer walks winds the mainspring. He makes them until about 1810.
c. 1783
Breguet hands
In gold or blued steel, their points hollowed out off centre, like an apple or a crescent moon. Their name, like that of the Breguet overcoil, soon passes into the vocabulary of watchmaking.
The pare-chute
A sprung suspension shields the balance’s fine pivots from shocks: a shock-protection device.
The tourbillon
Breguet’s patent: the whole escapement turns to cancel out the effect of gravity on pocket watches, above all when upright. The idea is also credited to his friend John Arnold.
1810–1812
No. 2639
Ordered by Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, on 8 June 1810 and finished on 21 December 1812: a repeater in an oblong case, set on a bracelet, often cited as the first wristwatch. It is last recorded in 1855.
No. 160, “Marie Antoinette”
Ordered about 1783 with every complication possible, with no limit of time or cost. It leaves the workshop in 1827, four years after Breguet’s death, under the direction of his son Antoine-Louis. Stolen in Jerusalem in 1983, it is recovered in 2007.
The Line of Precision
The error a day of each chapter’s clocks, on a logarithmic scale. The line moves on with the story: each chapter draws its own stretch.
No new record in this age: the reference is still Harrison’s H4.
- c. 1390 BCE: Clepsydra, ≈ half an hour a day
- c. 1386: Foliot tower clock, ≈ 15 min a day
- 1656: Huygens’s pendulum, ≈ 15 s a day
- c. 1715: Graham’s regulator, a few seconds a week
- 1761: Harrison’s H4, 5 s in 81 days