#Folio watch pendulum portable

The harsh climate of the neighbouring Jura allowed the manufacturing to take place during the winters when the farmers had nothing to do. Geneva played an important role in establishing Switzerland as a pivotal player in the field. Then merchants stepped in and entrusted the many stages of the production to different craft masters, including engravers, relief carvers, jewellers and enamellers. Timepieces were originally made by clock and watchmakers alone. Sturm points out however that this has not always been the case. Wandering hours, day and night dials, ‘grandes complications’ with the phases of the moon, lavishly enamelled dials with portraits of royalty, circles, squares and triangles, the telling of time has been nurtured by infinite imagination.

#Folio watch pendulum portable

With the invention of the pendulum around 1660 and the spiral balance in 1675 by the Dutch mathematician, astronomer and physician, Christiaan Huygens – who was inspired by the works of Galileo – clocks and portable timepieces could at last tell the minutes and not just the hours. According to Tellier, the first clocks were created to regulate the cycle of prayers in the monasteries after dark. It was only with the invention of mechanical timepieces in the 13th and 14th century that the length of hours could at last be anchored into a fixed time. Using a sundial, the Egyptians then divided the day into 12 intervals, probably to reflect the number of lunar cycles in a year and then subsequently into two periods of 12 intervals, the second one for night. Consequently the length of the intervals was variable, depending on the time of year and location. The Chaldeans further divided the day into six time intervals, three for day and three for night. The so-called sexagesimal system is believed to have been chosen because 60 is the smallest common multiple of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, therefore divisible by all six numbers.The later division of the hour into 60 minutes (from the Latin for small) and 360 seconds (for ‘second minute’, following the second division of the hour) repeated the same pattern and is also said to be at the origin of the 360 degrees of the circle. The Chaldeans noted that it takes 360 days for the same pattern of stars to appear in the sky and began by dividing the year into six periods of 60 days. It has been attributed to a semi-nomadic tribe, the Chaldeans, who settled in southern Babylonia, currently Iraq, and whose astrological observations led to the numerical division of time.

The division of time into hours probably dates back to 3,500 BC explains the show’s historical advisor Arnaud Tellier, former director of the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva. With more than 150 examples in diverse styles from different ages, including from the great watchmakers of history – Vacheron Constantin, Cartier, Piaget, Audemars Piguet, Jaeger-Lcoultre, and IWC – the exhibition is a tribute to man’s poetic hold on time. “We look at the face of a watch the same way as we look at the face of a person, we read its traits to understand what it is telling us, each one with a different expression, some mysterious, some playful, others secretive or joyful.” Telling Time at Lausanne’s Mudac design museum focuses on the capture of time by watchmakers, designers and artists from the 16th century to today, including the brazen newcomer, the Apple Watch.įor 30 years, Fabienne Xavière Sturm was in charge of the famous collections of the Museum of Watchmaking and Enamelware in Geneva, which she presented all over the world, but when she was invited by Mudac’s director, Chantal Prod’Hom, to co-curate the Lausanne exhibition, they rapidly decided to concentrate not on watchmaking or time itself, but on the way timepieces tell time. Version française published on 23 June 2015Ī more complete version was published by the Journal de la Haute Horlogerie on 18 July 2015: At the heart of a region renowned for fine traditional watchmaking, an exhibition reveals how the division of time by mankind more than 5,000 years ago continues to foster ingeniousness and creativity. The fascination with time has inspired countless interfaces, none more radical than the recent smartwatch. Artist Eric Morzier says that the ephemeral formation of the clock reminds us that time continues inexorably. Eric Morzier: Horloge tactile, horloge murale, 2005Ī screen displays a cloud of points that move randomly, but when it is touched the points gather to form a clock, until it is released and the points resume once again their random paths.