The contribution of Swiss scientists in watchmaking

Little boys like to walk around with their noses in the air, but that day, little Jacques-Frédéric looked at his feet. He was perhaps looking for snails, an occupation all the more natural since, the son of a farmer, he returned straight from a two-year stay in the large Alsatian town of Mulhouse, where he had been sent to learn German.
History, moreover, does not say whether he encountered any. But what he picked up on the ground would decide his future: little Houriet found a watch.

Watches were rare in 1754 and lost watches much rarer still, because of their price and the care taken with them ...
Jacques-Frédéric Houriet was 11 years old at the time. He examined the object with great curiosity, opened it, and was truly seized with admiration. The watch was returned to its owner, the local doctor, but his memory never left the child. This astonishing and tiny mechanism had impressed him so much that he talked about it constantly to his father, overwhelming him with questions, begging him to teach him the trade of watchmaker.

The profession was not common at that time, but struck by his son's determination, the father took home a watchmaker who taught the boy the basics of his art.
At 14, Jacques-Frédéric had lost none of his enthusiasm for watchmaking. His father, by deciding to place him in an apprenticeship, made a decisive choice by entrusting him to Abram-Louis Perrelet.
After three years spent in the workshop of the great master watchmaker, Jacques-Frédéric decided to see something else.
Be 16 and see Paris! This ambition might seem excessive in a child brought up in the Jura mountains. But not only did he leave, he even found work in Paris in the service of Julien LeRoy, watchmaker to King Louis XV.

Despite the exceptional training he had received, the young Houriet was on the verge of being discouraged by the difficulties of the work required of him. But by willpower, and thanks to his remarkable talent, he soon made astonishing progress.

He met other Swiss, “princes of the science of watchmaking”, who helped and advised him.
Jacques-Frédéric Houriet was barely more than 20 years old when he built, still in Paris, a complicated high-precision clock.
Half a century later, it had never changed by a full minute a year, and was used during that time to adjust the chronometers manufactured by Houriet.
The young Houriet was only 24 years old when he returned, matured and stimulated by his stay in Paris, to settle in Le Locle to found an establishment there with his brother-in-law.