Page 188 - A Life - my Live - my path

My hobbies

✓ Design complications
Retrograde' hands, 'jumping' hours or minutes, deadbeat
seconds…
✓ Astronomical features
Annual calendar, leap year, moon phases & tides, equation of
time,
✓ Technical features
Tourbillon, dry-running mechanism, regulator…

One of my most memorable visits was certainly to François
Paul JOURNE, because that day he was at the factory, and
I was able to talk to him for half an hour. He was wearing a
laboratory coat and working just like his employees. In
particular, he explained and showed me the work he had
done to make an exceptional watch with a big chime and a
little chime. This watch can strike (like Big Ben in London)
hours, quarters and minutes. To indicate, for example, 3:17
a.m., it chimes 3 times with a low tone (for 3 hours), once with
a high tone (for the quarter-hour) and 2 times on repeat (din-din)
for the 2 minutes. To show me the efficiency of his
mechanism, he stood in a corridor about ten meters from
where I was and made the watch chime, which - on request
- gives the precise time of day. The quality of the sound was
impressive. He also explained his work to find the right
material, the right blade curvature and the right hammer for
the low sound. It took over five years of research. Let me
conclude by saying that François Paul JOURNE is
considered by many to be the Breguet of modern times.
Louis Breguet (1747-1823) was born in Switzerland and moved

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