Why don't we talk more about ........ Ferdinand Berthoud?

Ferdinand Berthoud was born on March 18th 1727 to a family of distinguished clock- and watchmakers in Plancemont in the heart of the Val-de-Travers region of the canton Neuchâtel, Switzerland.. At the age of fourteen he was taken on by his brother, Jean-Henry, as a clockmaker's apprentice in Couvet, also receiving a scientific education. On April 16th 1745, aged 18, he moved to Paris, where he continued to hone his skills as a clockmaker. He employed his talents as a journeyman for the Parisian community of master watchmakers. Ferdinand Berthoud's expertise as a scientific engineer, his manual skill and his gift for mechanics were able to flourish, marking him out as one of the greatest horologists of all time.

In 1752, Ferdinand Berthoud submitted to the French Royal Academy of Sciences an equation clock marking leap years, demonstrating his extraordinary mastery of the art of horology..

On December 4th 1753, Ferdinand Berthoud was officially granted the title of Master Watchmaker at the age of 26. Ferdinand Berthoud was so well respected in his field that, in 1755, he was commissioned to write several reference articles on horology for "L’Encyclopédie méthodique" which was produced from 1751 to 1772. In 1759, Ferdinand Berthoud published his first specialist work, "L’Art de conduire et de régler les pendules et les montres, à l’usage de ceux qui n’ont aucune connaissance d’horlogerie”. This highly successful work was translated into several languages and reprinted numerous times during the 18th and 19th centuries.

On December 13th 1760, Ferdinand Berthoud presented his "Mémoire sur les principes de construction d’une Horloge de Marine”(1) to the French Royal Academy of Sciences, in which he described the famous Marine Clock no. 1, completed in early 1761. In 1763, Ferdinand Berthoud was appointed by the King to examine the John Harrison's H4 Marine Timekeeper in London. Harrison categorically refused to let Berthoud see the clock. However, his journey opened the doors to the English scientific fraternity, thanks to the importance of his horological work and publications, and on February 16th 1764 he was appointed a "foreign associate member" of the Royal Society in London. The following year, Berthoud produced two Marine Clocks, known as the No. 2 and No. 3. The watch known as the No. 3 was presented to the French Royal Academy of Sciences in 1761 as the No. 1.

On May 7th 1766, Berthoud submitted a memorandum to the duke of Praslin, comte de Choiseul and Minister of the Navy, detailing his plans for the construction of the no. 6 and no. 8 Marine Clocks..

On April 1st 1770, following the successful testing of Marine Clocks no. 6 and no. 8, Ferdinand Berthoud was awarded the warrant of Watchmaker-Mechanic to the King and to the Navy, receiving a royal commission for 20 timepieces..

In 1771, he equipped the Marine Watch No. 3 with a pivoted detent escapement instead of the double virgule escapement previously used. In 1773, Berthoud produced and supplied to the Admiralty around a dozen weight-driven and spring-driven clocks, all developed to measure the time at sea and calculate longitude

In 1785, Berthoud presented five clocks - numbers 18 and 19 (weight-driven) and numbers xxv, xxvii and xxix (spring-driven) to the count of la Pérouse, captain of a ship called "L’Astrolabe".

He set sail on August 1st on a round-the-world voyage to continue the discoveries made in the Pacific Ocean by the famous British explorer and cartographer, James Cook. After nearly three years at sea, the clocks were lost when the "Astrolabe" was tragically wrecked off the Solomon Islands in June 1788.

The secular and republican calendar, or French revolutionary calendar, was created during the French revolution and used from 1792 to 1806. Year I of the calendar began on September 22nd 1792 (the first of Vendémiaire, Year I of the republic)..

This calendar demonstrated the revolutionaries’ desire to adopt a universal system for measuring time based on the decimal system and no longer linked to the monarchy, by replacing the Gregorian calendar used by Christians since 1582. Decimal time was thus officially introduced in France on October 5th 1793 (fourteenth of Vendémiaire, Year II). That same year, Louis Berthoud delivered his first marine pocket chronometer featuring the decimal system, known as No. 26, to the French mathematician, political scientist and naval engineer Jean-Charles de Borda (1733-1799). Decimal clocks and watches are rare, and this chronometer was probably the first to use the decimal system. Two years later, and ten years before the abolition of the revolutionary calendar, the law of the eighteenth of Germinal, Year III (April 7th 1795) abolished decimal time in France.

In 1795, Ferdinand Berthoud was appointed a first class resident member of the Mechanical Arts section of the Institut National.

In 1797, Ferdinand’s nephew Louis Berthoud was awarded the "Institut des Sciences et des Arts" prize for his chronometers No. 27, produced for the Count of Fleurieu in 1795, and No. 32, with decimal time division. In 1802, after many years of research, Ferdinand Berthoud published one of his most important works: "Histoire de la mesure du temps par les horologes”, in which he demonstrated his exceptional knowledge of the art of horological mechanics. In the same year, Louis Berthoud was appointed Watchmaker-Mechanic to the Navy and in 1805, Watchmaker to the Paris Observatory and the Bureau des Longitudes. In 1804, Napoleon awarded Ferdinand Berthoud the title of Knight of the Legion of Honour as a member of the Institut National. His work earned him a special place in the history of science and technology, in particular the art of marine chronometry. He is the only horologist to have published the complete results of his research in a methodical and detailed manner, allowing his pieces to be reproduced exactly.

On June 20th, he died, childless, at the age of 80. He is buried at Groslay, in the Montmorency valley (Val d’Oise department), where a monument stands in his memory. An exceptional horologist with an extraordinary spirit, Ferdinand Berthoud left a particularly large body of work, both in the field of marine chronometers, decorative clocks and watches, specialist tools and scientific measuring instruments as well as dozens of specialist published works and articles comprising over 4,000 pages and 120 engraved plates.

Six years later, on September 18th 1813, Louis Berthoud died prematurely in Argenteuil. His chronometers were of particular interest to the scientists and naval officers of his time, on account of their extreme accuracy and elegance..

Louis' work was continued by his two sons, Jean-Louis Berthoud (1793-1880) and Charles-Auguste Berthoud (1798-1876), who were trained by Henri Motel, one of Louis Berthoud's former students. The two brothers established a company specialising in "nautical horology mechanics” in Paris and Argenteuil that was held in high esteem by navigators and scholars thanks to the unrivalled accuracy of its chronometers. Their timepieces bore the signature "Berthoud Frères". Charles-Auguste Berthoud was awarded a silver medal for an exhibition of French industrial products in 1819. He received the distinction again in 1823 and 1827, before being awarded the gold medal in 1834, 1844 and 1849, as well as the title of Knight of the Legion of Honour. Charles-Auguste Berthoud died in Paris on February 15th 1876. He is estimated to have produced around 350 marine chronometers. From that point on, no more marine chronometers would bear the illustrious name of Berthoud.

In 2006, Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, president of Chopard, acquired the Ferdinand Berthoud name and founded Chronométrie Ferdinand Berthoud