People
People who shaped watchmaking. Only historical figures: people who have died.
- Aaron Lufkin Dennison
The Boston watchmaker who, with Edward Howard, set out in 1849 to make watches by machine on the armory model, superintended the Waltham factory, and later took the method to Zurich and Birmingham.
- Abraham-Louis Breguet
A watchmaker born in Neuchâtel who opened a workshop in Paris in 1775, worked for the French court and much of Europe’s nobility, patented the tourbillon in 1801 and founded the house that still carries his name.
- Christiaan Huygens
The Dutch scientist behind the pendulum clock, who announced the spiral balance spring in Paris in 1675, took a French royal privilege for it, and then released it to every watchmaker.
- Ferdinand Adolph Lange
A Dresden-trained watchmaker who in 1845 moved to Glashütte, an impoverished former mining town in the Ore Mountains, with state support to train apprentices, and so started the watch industry the town is known for.
- Ferdinand Berthoud
The watchmaker from the Principality of Neuchâtel who became clockmaker-mechanic to the King and the Navy in Paris: author of the Encyclopédie’s article on horology and of over 4,000 pages of treatises, and builder of the sea clocks France sent on its great voyages.
- George Daniels
A British watchmaker (1926 to 2011) who made complete watches by hand in London and on the Isle of Man, restored and wrote on Breguet, and devised the co-axial escapement, patented in 1980 and put into production by Omega in 1999.
- George Graham
Tompion’s partner and heir in Fleet Street, who worked on the cylinder escapement for watches and the deadbeat for clocks, built instruments for Greenwich, trained Thomas Mudge and helped John Harrison.
- Georges Favre-Jacot
The Le Locle watchmaker, born Georges-Emile Favre-Bulle in 1843, who founded in 1865 the firm that became Zenith and brought its trades together in one works.
- Günter Blümlein
A German engineer and watch industry manager (1943 to 2001) who steered IWC back to mechanical watches after its sale to German owners in 1978, and who co-founded the revived A. Lange & Söhne with Walter Lange in 1990.
- Hans Wilsdorf
The Bavarian-born watch merchant who founded Rolex in London in 1905, moved it to Geneva, created Tudor, and left his company to a charitable foundation before his death in 1960.
- Jean-Antoine Lépine
Paris watchmaker and clockmaker to the King from about 1766, whose calibre of separate bridges without a fusee made much thinner watches possible, and who supplied many watches to Abraham-Louis Breguet.
- John Harrison
The Yorkshire carpenter and self-taught clockmaker who spent four decades on the longitude problem, built the sea clocks H1 to H3 and the watch H4, and fought the Board of Longitude for the prize he believed he had won.
- John Harwood
The Bolton-born watch repairer of the Isle of Man who patented a self-winding wristwatch with Harry Cutts in 1923; Fortis of Grenchen made it from 1926, and his own company sold it in Britain until 1931.
- Kintarō Hattori
A Tokyo clock dealer (1860 to 1934) who turned to making clocks and watches and founded the business that became Seiko.
- Moritz Grossmann
A Dresden-born watchmaker and technical writer who ran his own workshop in Glashütte from the 1850s and led the founding of the German watchmaking school there in 1878.
- Nicolas G. Hayek
A management consultant who drew up the 1983 plan to merge the failing Swiss watch groups ASUAG and SSIH and launch the Swatch, then ran the merged company, later the Swatch Group, until his death in 2010.
- Peter Henlein
A Nuremberg locksmith, born about 1479 or 1485 and dead in 1542, who made small portable clocks praised by Johannes Cochlaeus in 1511.
- Robert Hooke
The English natural philosopher who said he had put a spring on a watch balance about 1658, had Thomas Tompion make watches to his design in 1675, and disputed Huygens’s priority.
- Thomas Mudge
George Graham’s apprentice, who devised the detached lever escapement, put it in Queen Charlotte’s watch, and spent his later years on marine timekeepers for the Board of Longitude.
- Thomas Tompion
The London clockmaker who made Robert Hooke’s balance-spring watches in 1675, kept the fusee with the new spring, numbered his work, and left his Fleet Street business to George Graham.
- Walter Lange
The great-grandson of Ferdinand Adolph Lange, who left Glashütte after his family’s firm was expropriated in 1948 and came back after reunification to re-found A. Lange & Söhne there in 1990.