Defining Independence Part II
A History of Independent Watchmaking
“Do not be discouraged, or allow failure to dishearten you.”
— Abraham-Louis Breguet to his apprentices
The history of watchmaking is one of innovation, craftsmanship, and the slow dispersion of skills and talents from artisans and scientists across diverse disciplines. A journey through the history of horology reveals the inseparable connection between independent watchmaking and the evolution of timekeeping, a relentless pursuit driven by human curiosity.
I realized that the history of independent watchmaking is dense and deep, and the subject could easily fill multiple volumes. I thought that a few, short vignettes, might illustrate some of the history of independent watchmaking and demonstrate the ways in which one can work as an independent watchmaker. These short historical scenes provide context in which horology developed and independent watchmaking came to be.
Much of independent watchmaking exists as a result of an unexpected source: the Protestant Reformation. The seemingly unrelated decision of the Canton of Geneva to pass Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Ordinances in 1541 set the stage for a convergence of skill, ingenuity, and savoir faire that would establish the city as a watchmaking epicenter.
The influx of displaced French Huguenots imbued Geneva with a wealth of watchmaking knowledge and craftsmanship. While Calvin’s Ecclesiastical Ordinances banned the production of jewelry as a purely aesthetic pursuit, clocks were seen as instruments of science. The existing jewelry trade in Geneva ground to a halt, but jewelers soon realized that their newly arrived Huguenot counterparts could teach them watchmaking. Joining forces with the watchmakers, an exchange of ideas, methods, and tools took place, spurring innovation and knowledge exchange that laid the foundation for independent watchmaking.
Geneva, however, had a problem — it did not have the labor force to produce all of the components for clocks, and a solution was found in the pastoral lands surrounding the city. The long Swiss winters left shepherds and farmers looking for work to keep them busy, and the watch industry held for them a solution. While not tending to their land and flocks, these watchmakers sowed the seeds of independent watchmaking. Their efforts to manufacture small components provided the necessary support for the industry to flourish in Geneva.
During the 17th century horology was inextricably tied to scientific discovery. Astronomers like Galileo and Huygens were multi-disciplinary academics who in addition to studying math, physics, and the universe, were interested in horology. Galileo studied Jupiter’s moons from 1610–1612, allowing him to posit their phases as a solution to the Longitude problem. This might allow ships to accurately determine their longitudinal position and solve a long-standing problem of accurately finding a ship’s location.
Galileo’s ingenuity led to the invention of a pendulum clock with a verge escapement in 1642. Unfortunately the clock never made it past the concept phase as the verge escapement had inherent accuracy issues. In 1657, Huygens refined this concept with the invention of the pendulum clock, replacing the verge and foliot as an accurate timekeeping device. It would remain the dominant and most accurate form of timekeeping, while new generations of watchmakers and clockmakers worked diligently to use the material and tools available to them to innovate a better clock.
While Galileo’s suggestion for the use of Jupiter’s moons was not adopted as a method of solving the longitude problem, a British carpenter and clockmaker named John Harrison made solving the longitude problem the singular focus of his work. His relentless focus on building a clock that solved a specific problem with a singular focus mirrored the ethos of independent watchmakers today.
Born in 1693 in Yorkshire, Harrison felt called to work on a marine chronometer that would solve the problems of maritime navigation, not only because there was prize money on the line, but because the very existence of maritime trade depended upon a more accurate navigational system.
The problem for ships was that determining longitude was at best a guessing game with the chronometers of the time. Due to salt air, changes in humidity, temperature, and pressure aboard a ship on the ocean, the changes in pitch and roll, and lubricants drying out, clocks of the time had inherent issues that prevented their use for accurate navigation.
That problem was codified by the British government in 1714 when they launched the Longitude Prize, and Harrison was almost solely focused on the prize. A precision marine chronometer would allow for a much more accurate position to be drawn.
Harrison became obsessed. His single minded focus and his vision were not unlike today’s independent watchmakers. He had a vision for what could be and set out to look for new solutions to a problem that plagued every seafaring nation.
Harrison would find his solution in his work as a carpenter. His solution was ingenious, allowing the clock to run free of lubrication and be impervious to changes in temperature and humidity. Harrison found his solution in nature: lignum vitae, a very oily wood that would allow his clocks to run in all environments.
Despite making four marine chronometers over five decades, the Longitude Committee did not want to award Harrison the prize money, as each of his marine chronometers demonstrated some issues. In the end, Harrison was awarded more money than any other submission, for his work had largely proven that the longitude problem could be solved.
While these scientists and clockmakers developed clocks and escapements, and innovated solutions to solve long standing problems with timekeeping, Abraham Louis Breguet tinkered with ideas to improve the accuracy of clocks and scale production. From his very first souscription piece, Breguet was always thinking about how to improve upon the technology and manufacturing methods of the day.
To this end he invented the tourbillon, the overcoil hairspring, the first self-winding watch, the gong spring (which would later lead to the invention of the repeater), the pare-chute shock protection system, and the first self-winding watch and clock. His list of accomplishments is significant, but even more so because what started as Breguet as an independent maker became one of the first, if not the first industrialized independent watchmakers.
Through trial and tribulation, Breguet moved across Europe, sometimes by choice and others by force; his support for Jean Paul Marat, a French Revolutionary, led to a two year exile from France. Breguet not only survived, but flourished, building a legacy in the process. He was a very talented watchmaker, but may have been even more gifted at scaling production and bringing to life the many projects and ideas that lived in his head. Breguet was famous for not hiring unskilled laborers who needed to be trained, he hired experienced watchmakers who would bring his designs to life, allowing him to industrialize his production starting with his return to Paris in 1795.
Breguet built a legacy through industrialization of the watchmaking process, setting a precedent for what a brand could achieve, and influencing generations of watchmakers to come.
In the early 20th century pocket watches remained the dominant form of watch. It was not until 1904 that Cartier popularized the wristwatch with aviation pioneer Alberto Santos Dumont. World War I and the horrors of trench warfare quickly demonstrated the impracticality of the pocket watch in such an environment, forcing the migration of watches from pockets to wrists.
The period between World Wars ushered in a resurgence of independent watchmaking. While much of the industry was now focused on building and growing brands based on the wristwatch, there are still independent watchmakers innovating on the traditions of the craft. One such watchmaker is Louis Cottier, a second generation watchmaker focused on the problem of solving for a world time complication, a complication that had vexed his watchmaker father.
Cottier found an elegant solution to creating a worldtime complication with local time on a 12-hour display and a 24 hour rotating disc with the world’s 24 principal time zones called out by capital cities around the outside of the bezel. The solutions of two discs rotating in harmony allowed for an understanding of the time anywhere in the world at a glance.
Cottier’s ingenious worldtimer complication epitomized the spirit of independent watchmaking. Through a collaboration with established brands like Vacheron Constantin and Patek Philippe, Cottier’s creation became a design icon. This collaborative approach to watchmaking allowed a larger brand to serialize the production of his watch.
Cottier remains a fantastic example of one way to be independent in watchmaking, creating movements and licensing or selling the design to a company that could serialize their production, while he was free to focus on the next horological puzzle that fascinated him.
In the period following World War II, as the rest of Europe recovered, Swiss watch brands captured a larger share of the worldwide watch market. Brands grew and solidified their positions, secure enough in their position to collaborate with other brands to develop new movements, and to share the cost of R&D. The future looked bright for the mechanical watch industry until Christmas Day of 1969, when the first quartz watch was introduced by Seiko.
With an accuracy of +/- 5 seconds per month, the watch industry was immediately crestfallen. Many feared the demise of the watch industry, let alone the Swiss watch industry, something that had been part of the cultural and natural heritage since Calvin. Brands were horrified, they weren’t sure what this meant for their industry or their work.
Over the period known as the “Quartz Crisis,” seismic shifts occurred within the industry, with some brands closing and others absorbed into conglomerates. There was great fear that the mechanical watchmaking industry was finished. A national identity was at stake. In an age of rising technology, space exploration, and a coming digital revolution, mechanical watches faced the threat of extinction from their more accurate digital counterparts.
In the wake of the Quartz Crisis the mechanical watch was made superfluous. Watchmakers were free to create something new, to envision a watch that combined the best of classical watchmaking reimagined in modern materials. A new generation of watchmakers were ready to challenge the conventions of the Swiss watch industry and ignite a revolution of independent watchmaking.
In this series, I will dive into independent watchmaking, work towards a definition, and help create a better understanding about what it means to be an independent watchmaker, and the routes to getting there. Follow along as I drop a new installment of this series over the next few weeks, you can always read it here.
