ON YOUR MARKS
These days chronographs are aplenty, but their origins are more interesting yet
W W hat do horse racing and stargazing have in common? Well, they are the two pursuits that helped launch the most popular watchmaking complication of all time: the chronograph. Two hundred years ago a French watchmaker called Nicolas Rieussec was commissioned by Louis XVIII to make a device for timing the king’s horses. The ingenious solution was a clock with an ink-tipped nib that would mark the start and end point on the dial. This groundbreaking piece of tech was accurate to within a fifth of a second and Rieussec named it chronograph after the Greek for “time writer”.
There were obvious limitations to this system, though. Not least the fact that you had to wipe ink off the dial before you could use it again. And fill up the ink. But in 1821 you couldn’t be choosy. It was the only commercially available timing device of its kind, and later versions were used to time different sporting events and even to lend more military precision to artillery strikes.
Rieussec’s invention was credited as the first chronograph for knocking on two centuries until someone discovered one that trumped it. It turns out that another Frenchman made a chronograph first. A chap called Louis Moinet designed his timer for astronomers to track the movements of stars and planets through the sky. Not only did Moinet’s timer come out five years earlier, it was also much more advanced, timing to within 1/60th of a second and using hands like a modern one does. But because it never went into production, Moinet’s chronograph was not widely known until it was unearthed a few years ago.
You could say that made Moinet an unsung hero, but he didn’t do too badly in his lifetime. He was a polymath genius and celebrated watchmaker whose illustrious list of clients included Napoleon, Thomas Jefferson and King George IV. And he was certainly well ahead of his time. The chronograph as we know it today didn’t become a big thing until the middle decades of the 20th century, when planes filled the sky and cars roared around race circuits. Moinet is now rightly credited as the father of a function that is a favourite from entry level all the way up to top-drawer statement pieces. Perfect for whatever you want to time. Or just because you fancy one.