The Da Vinci of watchmakers: Jean Antoine Lepine, most import watch ever produced.

May 12, 2023,22:10 PM
 

Yes this is a bold statement and this can be argued from an academic standpoint as correct.

This is the watch that made him famous. He was already the Watch Maker to the King of France.
But with watches like the below model, he set forth a revolutionary design. In a matter of less than
10 years, Paris became the center of this new type of watch design that Lepine invented.





Jean Antoine Lepine is the father of the modern watch movement. Any person that 
has read enough about the development of watches understands that prior to Lepine,
watches were Verge and Fusee. These "watches" were basically small scale clocks
that were put into small pocketable cases. These watches were not very accurate.
They were more of a status symbol to those that could afford to commission a verge
fusee watch. 



J A Lepine is the inventor of not only the Lepine caliber. Taking notes from Wikipedia, you can see that he invented
many innovations that are actually incorrectly attributed to Abraham Breguet.  Lepine was the teacher for Abraham
Breguet who learned his trade in a partnership with Lepine. 














The total width of the movement is less than the width of two coins. It will take more than 100 years for all other companies to be able to create their own in house movements with that level of thinness and precision.






For those of you technical people, this watch also has more incredible technical innovations. This is the first ever shock protection device: the "Parachute Shock Protection". And finally, this watch is perhaps the first watch with thermal compensation. If you consider on a few years prior, the world was using Verge Fusee watches with very crudely hand carved parts to literally over night, we have precision manufactured mass produced parts with thermal compensation that is scientific instrument grade. The watch is absolutely incredible. This watch has more parts than the Longines 20H and is only a few millimeters thick. 




If you do more research into Jean Antoine Lepine, you will realize he is member of the Watch Makers Hall of Fame. 

One of the fathers of the very first Adding Machines like Pascal. 
Created laboratory instruments. 
Is in many major museums around the world including the Louvre













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Thank you!

 
By: jmpTT : May 13th, 2023-00:34
A very informative post. Always interesting to wonder if old escapement types like the cylinder escapement will make a comeback with new materials.

Quite right!

 
By: Esharp : May 13th, 2023-05:07
Thank you for putting this together. (Hard to read all the screenshots on mobile but will have to come back to it later.) No question tho, Lépine was fundamental to modern watchmaking! Best E.

WOW. thank you for putting this post together.

 
By: MilDiver : May 13th, 2023-08:11
Great read. (for post like this I wish we had a "right click " for easy save in a word format file so I can keep, read again and mark things of interest). Few questions if I may ask: 1. Do you see his inventions in current movements? which? (I mean "direc... 

Great to see interest in this historic watch

 
By: Lepine : May 13th, 2023-20:18
At first glance, it's just a pocket watch. But given what was achieved with this watch 240 years ago, it's amazing.
By: Lepine : May 14th, 2023-18:37
Well the obvious ones are the Breguet, Chronoswiss, and RGM which come to mind.

Fascinating.

 
By: TheMadDruid : May 15th, 2023-13:25
You've whet my appetite for more research. Thank you for this post.

Anyone else have a proper Jean-Antoine Lepine?

 
By: Lepine : May 15th, 2023-20:21
I think I have only come across one other fully signed J A Lepine. Most of the watches that I have come across are his early period in porcelain or Paris watches that look like a Lepine but are not signed by him. Since many watches were produced by the Ma...