Take a look inside any watchmaking workshop and you will find craftsmen working diligently to perfect what others invented before them. These people make up the vast majority of contemporary watchmakers. However, there are also those rare pioneers whose genius changed the course of watchmaking history: these are the inventors.
Abraham-Louis Perrelet was one of these trailblazing inventors. In his workshop in Le Locle, he revolutionised the winding technique used in watchmaking.
His story takes us to the birthplace of watchmaking traditions and savoir-faire – Switzerland’s Jura region, which saw the groundbreaking invention of the selfwinding movement around 1770. Almost winding a quarter of a millennium later, this still remains the most effective way to bring mechanical calibres to life.
From the Renaissance to the Age of Enlightenment, many brilliant minds were fascinated by the question of perpetual motion.

Was it possible to design a mechanism that, after an initial impulse, would continue to function indefinitely?

There is no solution to this problem: the laws of modern physics have dispelled this long-cherished dream forever. However, even if such research was ultimately in vain, at least it had the virtue of stimulating human ingenuity – of setting it in perpetual motion. It was Abraham-Louis Perrelet who came to solve it.

Prior to Perrelet’s invention, watch owners were forced to wind their timepieces manually. This was done with a small key that was turned between the thumb and the index finger. A single oversight and the hands would stop: time lost forever.
An indefatigable researcher, Perrelet focused his efforts on developing a system to do away with this daily chore. It was towards 1770 that his efforts were to bear fruit.
His invention was based on a wholly innovative principle: namely that the barrel mainspring could be wound using the energy generated by the natural movements of the wearer. With this ingenious mechanism, Perrelet made it possible to harness the energy generated by simple body movements and use it to wind the mainspring. The idea was both simple and brilliant.