Cradle and tourbillon of Swiss-watchmaking - La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle, Watchmaking Town Planning 1302; Craftsmanship of mechanical watchmaking and art mechanics 01560
What and Why
When it comes to precision and punctuality, no one can beat the Swiss, just observe the incredibly vast but precise networks of railways in Switzerland (French: Suisse). The term 'Swiss-made' comes up to laud their quality of precision, and this is genuinely no hyperbole. Part of this Swiss-made precision also derives from their historic prowess in quality watchmaking, which has really become synonymous with the country itself.
Watchmaking really started in La Chaux-de-Fonds of the Watch Valley. The Watch Valley is the western arc of Switzerland formed by the Jura mountains which stretches from Geneva (Genève) in the south to Basel in the north, bordering France.
It is interesting to note how history and religions have moulded the Watch Valley and in particular La Chaux-de-Fonds to become the birthplace of Swiss watchmaking and the world centre of luxury watches. During the 16th century CE, Europe was under the time of Reformation, and religious tensions and persecutions erupted in widespread deadly violence against Protestant Christians in France, leading to mass fleeing from France. One of those who fled was John Calvin (né Jehan Cauvin), who was a pastor, humanist lawyer and prominent reformer. Calvin, himself a very punctual person, encouraged the Huguenots to join him and flee to nearby Geneva to take refuge. The Huguenots were a French Protestant group who held to the Reformed and Geneva was then a safe Protestant stronghold. The term Huguenots came from the then Genevan political leader and burgomaster Besançon Hugues, who helped the group. Amongst them were many French master watchmakers, who would help turn Geneva into a renowned watchmaking centre.
While Calvin was himself fleeing from persecution, he also exerted his 'negative' pressure to his new adopted residence. During the Reformation, Geneva was known for its jewellery crafts. However under Calvin’s and the Huguenots' Reformation, and their strong religious beliefs, jewellery was considered a form of idolatry, and was therefore banned. This left all the artisans and craftsmen to turn towards watchmaking, and consequently working with the French immigrants, turned Geneva and slowly the surrounding region to a watchmaking powerhouse. As these watchmakers moved north, many of them quickly settled in La Chaux-de-Fonds and established the first workshops and guilds and hence stamped the tiny town as the birthplace of watchmaking, instead of Geneva.
Toponymy
While La Chaux-de-Fonds translates to 'limestone from the bottom' in French, the actual etymology is a bit farther than that, and technically the area is not known to have lime deposits. The word 'chaux' comes from the pre-Indo-European root '-calmis' meaning 'arid plateau'. The word 'fonds' seems to be inspired by the Latin word 'fons', or 'fontem' meaning 'fountain'. So the place means the fountain in an arid plateau, as the city sits on 1 km-high plateau.
See
International Museum of Horology (Musée International d'Horlogerie)
The International Museum of Horology (Musée International d’Horlogerie) is an excellent appreciation of anything about time measurement: ranging from history, technology to physics. Naturally most of the museum's exhibit is about the different types of chronographs and chronometers in history and technology, and it is an absolutely fantastic display for nerds like me.
Naturally one of the first thing the museum displays are various Swiss-made luxury watches.
Some of the famous watchmakers currently producing in the Watch Valley include, in chronological order, Jaquet Droz (La Chaux-de-Fonds, 1738 CE), Vacheron Constantin (Plan-les-Ouates, 1755 CE) Girard-Perregaux (La Chaux-de-Fonds, 1791 CE), Baume & Mercier (Geneva, 1830 CE), Longines (Saint-Imier, 1842 CE), Patek Philippe (Plan-les-Ouates, 1839 CE), Ulysse Nardin (Le Locle, 1846 CE), Omega (La Chaux-de-Fonds, 1848 CE), Tissot (Le Locle, 1853 CE) Chopard (Geneva, 1860 CE), TAG Heuer (Saint-Imier / La Chaux-de-Fonds, 1860 CE), Breitling (Saint-Imier, 1884 CE), etc.. It is quite evident from this list why La Chaux-de-Fonds took over Geneva as the watchmaking epicentre as it was not only the earliest producer of branded watches in Jaquet Droz, it is also the birthplace of most of these watch companies.
Two luxury brands deserve special mention in the technological development of watchmaking. Pierre Jaquet-Droz, who founded Jaquet Droz, invented the first mechanical automata, or mechanical robots, in La Chaux-de-Fonds when the town was under the rule of Prussia (German: Preußen). This literally paved the way for automatic watches, robotics and modern computers. The other important milestone was made by Abraham Breguet of Breguet fame. Breguet was not founded in the Watch Valley but rather in Paris, but later moved its headquarter to L'Abbaye of the Watch Valley. Breguet invented at least four important chronographical technologies for the industry that are still in use today: the tourbillon; the self-winding watch mechanism; the pare-chute: the shock-protection system, and the over-coil.
The display of these chronographs / chronometers range from tree-rings to sundials to clockwork mechanisms to astronomical clocks in a multi-storeyed museum as below.
Clearly as technology has advanced, we have also moved away from mechanical watches. The most accurate clocks nowadays are the atomic clocks, based on the resonance frequency of atoms. In fact you cannot get more accurate that this, because now this is how the unit of time, second (s) is defined by the International System of Units (Système International, SI): 'The second is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency, ΔνCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9192631770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1.'. In front of us was a caesium clock in display.
Watchmaking Town Planning Exhibition (Espace de l'Urbanisme Horloger)
The city design of La Chaux-de-Fonds deserves a lot of mention. Clearly the city was born with its watchmaking industry and a lot of this was designed for this purpose. The streets were originally designed to be relatively narrow to facilitate rapid transport of parts and products between one factory and the other, when the local volume was not that big. However disaster struck in 1794 CE when the city was partially wiped out by fire. As a result La Chaux-de-Fonds was rebuilt slowly following a grid street plan, which became in vogue with the mathematical advancement during the time. The streets were purposefully widened to cater for larger volume and the city layout was almost Cartesian, which is still unique among Swiss cities until today. All the factories are constructed with large windows facing the sun direction, deliberately bringing in the natural light necessary for the watchmakers.
The city is thus nicknamed 'huge factory town (German: riesige Fabrikstadt)' by Karl Marx in Das Kapital because of its layout.
This contrasts largely with the old eastern section of the city, roughly demarcated by Rue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville, which was spared by the fire. All these are information are shown in the small Watchmaking Town Planning Exhibition (Espace de l'Urbanisme Horloger), although the exhibit is not very interesting, to be honest.
By the way, it is important to note that the tiny town is not only renowned for its watchmaking nowadays. Due to watchmaking, the town has also developed its status for her precision-machining capabilities, especially filing and lathing. Nowadays the town is also famous for her micromechanical industry.
Buy and Do
While everyone will think of buying a luxury watch from the city to highlight its origin, it is actually quite surprising that there is not a single watch shop in town. One will be able to visit the shop floors or even do a watchmaking class in the town, but one cannot find any flagship store there, in spite of the fact that many of the afore-mentioned brand actually started in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The wallet gets lucky in this town!
As one can imagine, the skill of watchmaking in the region is an important heritage and it is now an ICH. There is an official Le Garde Temps workshop in town that gives you the experience of making your own watch. As in everything in Switzerland, it will cost a whopping CHF 2,000 Fr for that experience!
Eat and Drink
Roasted chestnut (Brisolée)
The local food is roasted chestnut (brisolée) from the region. Usually served with cured meat, cheese and grapes.
Getting There and Around
We drove to the town but with the Swiss-made railway, access to the town is conveniently accessible by train as well. The town is not very interesting apart from the two museums. The town is so tiny that it is best explored on foot. It will not take you more than one day for the town. The entrance fee for either museum is 15 Fr.
UNESCO Inscriptions
The site of La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle watchmaking town-planning consists of two towns situated close to one another in a remote environment in the Swiss Jura mountains, on land ill-suited to farming. Their planning and buildings reflect watchmakers’ need of rational organization. Planned in the early 19th century, after extensive fires, the towns owed their existence to this single industry. Their layout along an open-ended scheme of parallel strips on which residential housing and workshops are intermingled reflects the needs of the local watchmaking culture that dates to the 17th century and is still alive today. The site presents outstanding examples of mono-industrial manufacturing-towns which are well preserved and still active. The urban planning of both towns has accommodated the transition from the artisanal production of a cottage industry to the more concentrated factory production of the late 19th and 20th centuries. The town of La Chaux-de-Fonds was described by Karl Marx as a “huge factory-town” in Das Kapital where he analyzed the division of labour in the watchmaking industry of the Jura.
At the crossroads of science, art and technology, the skills related to the craftsmanship of mechanical watchmaking and art mechanics are used to create watchmaking objects designed to measure and indicate time (watches, pendulum clocks, clocks and chronometers), art automata and mechanical androids, sculptures and animated paintings, music boxes and songbirds. These technical and artistic objects feature a mechanical device that generates movements or emits sounds. Though generally hidden, the mechanisms can also be visible, which contributes to the aesthetics and poetic dimension of the objects. The Jura Arc is an area in which craftsmanship remains particularly dynamic thanks to the presence of highly qualified craftspeople and companies that promote the skills and a full range of training options. Historically, entire families were involved in the practice, developing apprenticeship practices and professional and family alliances. Skills were initially learned in training schools. Nowadays, practitioners also share their know-how via online blogs, forums and tutorials and collaborative open source projects. As well as serving an economic function, the skills have also shaped the architecture, urban landscape and everyday social reality of the regions concerned. The practice conveys many values such as good workmanship, punctuality, perseverance, creativity, dexterity and patience, and the infinite quest for precision and the intangible aspect of time measurement give the practice a strong philosophical dimension.
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