Perpétuelles à roue de rencontres
Description
The history of the automatic watch, also called "perpetual" has already been the subject of many researches on the various devices listed.The analysis of a report of the Academy of Sciences, written in 1778 by Le Roy and Fouchy, consigned by the Marquis de Condorcet, allows a new approach to this subject.This report perfectly describes an automatic watch deposited by Hubert Sarton, a Liège watchmaker (1748-1828) .The first peculiarity lies in the fact that it had a wheel escapement meeting, a primordial detail on the origin of this kind of parts.It thus reveals one of the origins of automatic watches, that of the device called "rotor", used by all the watchmakers currently, and which modern mechanical watchmaking was able to maintain itself, even to develop in the face of the appearance of quartz watches.This is a new page added to the great book of the beautiful history of watchmaking.
