LOUIS-ABRAHAM PERRELET

The undisputed father of the “perpetual” watch

Poor Abraham-Louis! He must be turning in his grave: history, as we know, is continually debated, questioned, reinterpreted in the oddest ways. An example? Imagine that the automatic watch was Belgian .. after all, didn’t the Belgian people find a recipe for chocolate too?

Of course, by now, the automatic watch would have been acclaimed as Belgian Made all over the world ! Poor Abraham-Louis is no longer around to defend his genial invention against his detractors who insinuate that a certain Belgian watchmaker, Hubert Sarton, completely unknown to the battalion of technicians, researchers and other precision maniacs, was the real inventor of the “perpetual” watch, the ancestor of the automatic movement, that fabulous invention which the watch manufacturers of France and now of Switzerland attribute without a doubt to Abraham-Louis Perrelet.

For reasons unknown, the Belgian patented a movement which ressembles the Perrelet one. So: theft, usurpation?

In the world of inventions, the rule is that smart jacks jump in to claim other’s inventions as their own.

Any number of patents have been granted which are mere copies of someone else’s genius. History being a liar, a cheater, a vagrant, it can undo what it did yesterday … Try as it may, it can’t deny the products created by the Le Locle inventor who left many “perpetual” watches, at a time when nobody mentioned Sarton’s genial timekeepers.

What’s the controversy about?

You’ll find the answer in the manners, customs and habits of that time: the XVIIIth century was not known for registering patents. This was a complicated matter, taking time and money; travelling to London, Paris, Amsterdam was difficult and, in the end, nobody was sure of obtaining the correct document witnessing the invention of a product. In fact, in the mountains of Neuchâtel, nobody even thought of doing this at all. In his workshop, Abraham-Louis Perrelet concentrated on his research. He felt around, had a feeling and, suddenly, by adding a free oscillating weight to the movement, the “perpetual” watch was born. There it was, snug in his pocket, winding up by itself! 160 years later, Hans Wilsdorf, managing director of Rolex, attempted to patent (the XX century brought prudence!) his Oyster Perpetual which has a mechanism based on a centrally winding rotor. But he is fair play and, faced with the accumulation of undisputed proof, Rolex bowed down.

Perfected just before the French revolution, Perrelet’s invention was so fabulous that news of it spread like wild fire despite the slowness of mail delivery and transportation: the first acclaim came from Frédéric-Samual Osterwald, the director of the typographic society of Neuchâtel and participating author of the Diderot and Alembert Encyclopedia where he wrote the “Neuchâtel” article on watch-making. May 1780, Osterwald writes to Jacques-Louis Perrot, a manufacturer in La Chaux-de-Fonds, asking him for watch-making news in the Neuchâtel mountains. Perrot answers with: “the perpetual movement pieces invented two or three years ago in our mountains are gaining notoriety … these are bigger watches than usual which are self-winding by simply wearing them around a room for a while or by moving them from time to time.” In a subsequent letter, he states that this is the invention of A.-L. Perrelet. Some time later, at the Court of Versailles, the abbé of Versailles and Paris, Joseph-Grellet Desprades (1733-1820) expressed great interest in this invention … “I’d take one of these, he wrote, if I were certain it would function”. Once he received the watch, he told everyone it was not very practical because the new balance caused the watch to vibrate when he moved around.

In 1777, a scientist, specialized in botany, minerals, physics and geology, professor Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, one of the founders of the Société des Arts de Genève, hero of the first scientific ascension of the Mont-Blanc in 1787 – but also interested in mechanics and watch-making – decided to travel to Neuchâtel in order to meet Master Perrelet, the watchmaker who “constructed a watch which would wind up by just sitting in the pocket of a person walking”. Such was the inscription in the 1777 register of meetings (Extract of Science, tome 1 of the above Société) which was repeated in the Register of the general assembly of June 11 of the same year. De Saussure’s personal notes read: “and so, Mr. Perrelet, the inventor of the self-winding watch … had to re-make the first watch because he had not integrated a stop mechanism and the winder had broken because a man wearing the watch ran to the post office. Now though, he has integrated a stop mechanism which was difficult to make but which works well”.

On December 23, 1778 a report of the Académie des Sciences de Paris stated, one year and a half later, that a certain Hubert Sarton of Liège, patented “a watch which never needed winding”.

The testimonies of the XVIII century will be completed during the next century by research published in 1863 in the Biographie de Neuchâtel, written probably by F.A.M. Jeanneret: “ … it was he (A.-L. Perrelet) who invented the perpetual movement or the movement which winds when a person carries a watch. The first watches manufactured were bought by Breguet and by a certain Recordon from London …”

The XXth Century

The XXth Century played an important role in the consecration of this invention which was not fortunate enough to have a patent.

Rolex, despite its considerable means, actually had to give up its pretentions to the invention of the automatic watch in the early 1930’s. Later, in the book “Vademecum Jubilé Rolex IV” which refers to the history of the automatic watch and was co-authored by the watch-making historian Alfred Chapuis, the manufacturer speaks of several watchmakers taking advantage of Abraham-Louis Perrelet’s invention.

Another Rolex publication “Montres Automatiques” written by Hans Kocher and edited in Western Germany in 1969, contains several references to the invention of Abraham-Louis Perrelet.

“Histoire et Technique de la Montre Suisse”, written by Eugène Jaquet and Alfred Chapuis, in collaboration with G. Albert Berner, (Urs Graf Publications, Basel and Olten 1945), set aside any doubt : " Abraham-Louis Perrelet, called the Old one (1729-1826), professed his lengthy career in Le Locle. He was a watchmaker of exceptional intelligence and great sagacity and provided considerable impulsion to the watch-making industry of Le Locle by sharing with his colleagues. We give him the credit for inventing the “perpetual” or “self-winding” watch which is wound by the simple movement of the wrist. The first watches of this kind were bought by Breguet and Louis Recordon in London."

The documents

In 1958, the historian Alfred Chapuis published a book by the Editions du Griffon in Neuchâtel called “Grands Artisans de la Chronométrie”, in which several pages were dedicated to Perrelet’s invention of the self-winding watch. Quite precisely: “All of the documents which we have examined speak irrevocably of the invention of a perpetual watch by Abraham-Louis Perrelet between 1770 and 1777 or there about. This movement was immediately copied and imitated, first in the mountains of Neuchâtel and then by others in Geneva and elsewhere”. Thirty years later, the “World Book of Inventions”, edited in nine languages, refers to Perrelet’s contribution to automatic watches.

A special number of the Italian magazine “Orologi da POLSO”, dedicated to the automatic movement, states in 1991 that the discovery of this mechanism belongs to Perrelet; as did the Chronoswiss publication of 1993, edited in Munich and entitled “Faszination der  Mechanik”.

Still another recognition appears in Emmanuel Breguet’s book: “Breguet, watchmaker since 1775, life and posterity of Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823)”, edited by Alain de Gourcuff in Paris in 1997: “This same difficulty to obtain precise measurement also shows up in the work of Abraham-Louis Perrelet (1729-1826) of Le Locle, who was most probably the inventor of the automatic self-winding movement…..”.

Still more written proof

In 1997, a Chopard edition mentions the genial discovery of Abraham-Louis Perrelet. Also, the 2000 book edited by the SIHH called “ Master watchmaker: a culture, a profession, an art”, stating “At the same time, Abraham-Louis Perrelet, of Le Locle (Switzerland), invented and assembled in circa 1770 a pocket watch which would wind automatically by a simple walking movement.” Gil Baillod of “Montres Passion” wrote in 2003: “The rapid development of the industrial manufacture of watch pieces is attributed to Frédéric Japy, born at Beaucourt near to Montbéliard in 1749. Beaucourt is a two days walk from the Neuchâtel mountains. The senior Japy sent his three sons to study under one of the most famous watchmakers of the times: Abraham-Louis Perrelet, inventor in 1775 of the automatic movement. After a two year apprenticeship, the Japy brothers had learned enough to go their way alone.”

That same year, in October, Girard-Perregaux, Precious Time, published a book entitled “Cinématique de la montre mécanique”, written by Christian Jacot, which says: “It was in 1770 that the first self-winding watches appeared. This invention is attributed to Abraham-Louis Perrelet of Le Locle, born in 1729”.

They all agree

Watch-making dictionaries also concur in citing Abraham-Louis Perrelet as the inventor of the automatic watch, notably G.-A. Berner’s “Dictionnaire Professionnel Illustré de l’Horlogerie”, re-edited in 1988 and translated into four languages. The same as  the “Enciclopedia delgi Orologi da Polso” (special issue of the “Orologi da Polso”) stating: “Also in Le Locle, Abraham-Louis Perrelet was born (1729-1826), an expert watchmaker, who, in circa 1770, built an automatic movement watch.”

Finally, on the Internet site (www.fhs.ch) of the Fédération de l’Industrie Horlogère Suisse, the chapter entitled “From the beginning to today” states that “in 1770 Abraham-Louis Perrelet created the self-winding watch, named perpetual, and the predecessor of the automatic watch”. Further on, “Abraham-Louis Perrelet (1729-1826), well-known Swiss watchmaker, inventor of the automatic watch."

For some reason, Hubert Sarton has disappeared from the saga of the automatic watch !