Besançon

The heritage inventory says that before 1793 the city’s role in watchmaking was mainly commercial, between the French market and the Swiss makers of Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds.¹

Laurent Mégevand, a Genevan settled at Le Locle and married to a Breguet, proposed a national watch manufacture; the decree of 11 November 1793 gave Swiss settlers generous terms.^1, 5

Estimates of the Swiss colony range from 80 watchmakers to 700, 930 or 1,855 people; most came from Le Locle and Neuchâtel, others from Geneva, Porrentruy and Montbéliard.^1, 2, 5

Mégevand's enterprise failed by 1798, but the Swiss stayed: in 1848 nearly all of Besançon's 3,500 watchmakers were Swiss or naturalised Swiss.^1, 5

The city made ordinary watches in quantity, 'le bon courant'; by 1866 it produced 98% of the gold and silver watches made in France.^1, 2

The heritage inventory records that most work stayed in homes and small workshops; in 1875 the trade directory listed 5,072 people, a tenth of the population, and 191 ‘fabricants’ who mostly assembled movements bought in the Pays de Montbéliard, the Haut-Doubs or Switzerland.¹

The municipal watchmaking school opened in 1861 (nationalised 1891).^1, 5

The inventory notes that Swiss firms opened branches in the city after 1918, Zenith among them in 1921.¹

The observatory, decreed in 1878 and in service in 1885, was meant to give a city making a thousand watches a day its own exact time and to certify chronometers; it ran an annual chronometer competition from 1889.^1, 3

From December 1897 it stamped watches classed as chronometers with a viper's head designed by Alphée Dubois; the mark's position showed the class. The service was revived in 2008 after about thirty years.⁶

In 1930, as fewer makers entered the chronometer competition, director René Baillaud created a second mark, the 'Poinçon de Besançon', for good-quality ordinary watches.⁷

Its trials were part of a European system with Neuchâtel, Geneva and Kew; they ended with the arrival of quartz.^3, 8

Lip, founded in 1867, grew into the city’s largest maker; its collapse in 1973 opened the ‘Lip affair’.^1, 9

Swiss and Asian competition and quartz reduced the industry in the 1970s; French watchmaking fell from about 14,000 workers to 8,000 in the 1980s, and firms turned to micromechanics.^1, 9

The Musée du Temps opened in the Palais Granvelle in 2002, bringing together the city's horology and history collections.^9, 10