History

Abraham-Louis Perrelet - Inventor of the automatic watch

“History is interpreted by written accounts”.

In the world of watchmaking, there are those who in-vent and create and those who, with skill and patience, perfect the designs of others. In this world you will rub shoulders with excellent craftsmen, who are often greatly admired . Praiseworthy representatives of con-temporary watch-making. This world also includes men whose genius at a given moment revolutionised the way things were done: these are the discoverers, and Abraham-Louis Perrelet was one of them.

There are innumerable accounts testifying to this fab-ulous discovery of inventing the automatic watch by Abraham-Louis Perrelet.

Thus, in 1777, Professor Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, one of the founders of the Société des Arts de Genève (Geneva Arts Society), embarked on a journey through the Neuchâtel region to make some useful investiga-tions by visiting the watchmaking manufacturers and craftsmen. He informed the committee that a certain Mr Perrelet, a watchmaker from Le Locle, had made a special watch constructed in such a manner that it wound itself automatically in a person's pocket just by the movement he made while walking, and that it ran for eight days. In his personal notes, de Saussure noted: «... from there we went to Mr Perrelet, the inventor of the watch which self-winds just through the movement of the person carrying it ... He had to make the first model again because he hadn't installed a stop mech-anism and, on one occasion, when the self-winding mechanism was shaken too much by a man running to the post office, it broke the watch. Mr Perrelet has now integrated an efficient stop mechanism. He had a lot of trouble finding out how to make it, but it works”. As for Frédéric-Samuel Osterwald, whom you may recall con-tributed to the editing of the Encyclopaedia of Dider-ot and d'Alembert, he asked Jacques-Louis Perrot for news about the watchmaking industry in the Neuchâtel Mountains. The latter replied as follows: “The perpet-ual motion watches which were invented two or three years ago in our mountains have aroused considerable curiosity and have done more than merely bring fame to these parts; these are bigger watches than usual and they are self-winding: all the wearer has to do is to walk around the room several times during the day, 8 min-utes' walk is enough to wind them up for 24 hours…”. At the Court of Versailles, the Abbot of Versailles and Paris, Joseph-Grellet Desprades, expressed a marked in-terest in this invention, regarding which he had written seventeen letters to Mr Osterwald.

Over the past 100 years, numerous historians have stud-ied the rich heritage of Swiss watchmaking and extolled its origins. They have contributed as much to special-ist publications as they have to prestigious brands in researching their past and have paid tribute to Abra-ham-Louis Perrelet, recognising him as the inventor of automatic watches.

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Abraham-Louis Perrelet - Story of a brillant watchmaker

His path in life was clearly mapped out: he wanted to become a watchmaker.

Abraham-Louis Perrelet was born on the 9 January 1729 in Le Locle, during one of those long winters that numb the Neuchâtel Mountains. The fairies, mischie-vous companions of these wild regions, were generous when they bent over the child's cradle: they offered him intelligence, clear-sightedness, imagination and know-how. With these exceptional gifts and his passion com-bined, Abraham-Louis Perrelet would inscribe his name in golden letters in the annals of watchmaking and in those of craftsmen of genius.

His father, Daniel Perrelet, was a farmer and a carpen-ter. During the interminable winter months he made tools, some of which were extremely fine and designed for watchmakers' use.

From his adolescence onwards, it was only natural for Abraham-Louis to follow in his father's footsteps and work in the field of toolmaking. His path in life seemed clearly mapped out: he wanted to become a watch-maker. From that moment on, he found his vocation, in which he would more than excel and accomplish as much on a professional as on a human level.

He innovated and perfected a range of new combinations to improve the way timepieces ran. He thus be-came the first person in Le Locle to produce cylinder escapements, duplex escapements, perpetual calendar escapements and equation of time escapements. He created the draft model, gave it the finishing touches, pinions, wheels, escapement and winding mechanism. In spite of his young age, he had already built himself a solid reputation and his expert opinion was much sought after. He was also one of the most popular mas-ter watchmakers of his time. Abraham-Louis Breguet was trained in his workshops, as was his own grandson, Louis-Frédéric Perrelet, who went on to become offi-cial watchmaker to the Kings of France. He readily an-swered every one of the questions his colleagues asked him when they were faced with all sorts of difficulties, and at a single glance he was able to spot all the flaws which spoilt his competitors' work.

He spent his entire life at his family home, and remained very attached to his town and his origins. He passed away at Le Locle in 1826 after working for almost 80 years on perfecting his art, the art of watchmaking.

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Louis-Frédéric Perrelet - Inventor of the split second chronograph

The Perrelet family is a true dynasty in watchmaking.

The Perrelet family constitutes a true dynasty in watch-making. The descendants of Abraham-Louis Perrelet, known as “the elder”, took up the torch, although they did not have his talent, with the exception of his grandson, Louis-Frédéric (1781-1854), whose name also went down in the history of watchmaking inventions. His grandfather trained him, and he completed his edu-cation at “L'Ecole Breguet”. He set up business in Paris, working for the French Court and then the European royalty. His inventions included marine watches with measuring instruments, and he patented a split sec-ond precision chronograph in 1827. A large number of pieces in museums and private collections bearing the Perrelet signature were produced by Louis-Frédéric, and live on as historical references of the dazzling know-how of that period.

On Louis-Frédéric's death in 1854 his son Louis, who was also a watchmaker to the king, took over his father's business and carried on with the family tradition.

It is thus thanks to the descendants, many of whom were watchmakers themselves, that the tradition of Abraham-Louis Perrelet, known as “the elder”, has lived on to the twenty-first century. Today, the brand Perrelet considers as one of its most important missions to interpret the rich heritage of its founder in a true and modern way.