Marie-Antoinette's Watch: Adultery, Larceny & Perpetual Motion

Chapter 9

Paris

One bright summer morning in 1784, a few months after Breguet, now thirty-seven, received the title of master Watchmaker from the notoriously protective Parisian Guild, king Louis XVI called him into his study to place a royal commission. It was unusual for the king to make such a request directly - he placed most orders by post and sent notes to the city requesting tools for himself and baubles for the queen.64

The king already owned many Breguet pieces, mostly pocket watches with white faces and the trademark blued Breguet hands shaped like small, closed poppies, a detail much beloved by Breguet's customers. But now he wanted something special - the "perfect watch," he told Breguet.

It was clear that the king didn't expect much of an answer, perhaps an obsequious agreement and a bill, later on, when the "perfect" watch arrived at Versailles. But instead of scraping and bowing, the serious if distracted watchmaker answered truthfully within his capacity as watchmaker to the king. He knew there could be no perfect watch, for nothing he tried in his efforts to remove friction - from adding jewels to the pivots in order to reduce the contact of metal on metal, to polishing every spindle and gear, to shrinking the parts - got rid of it altogether. Instead of a bow and a quick retreat, Breguet contemplated the request for a moment. "Provide me the perfect oil, Sire," he said finally, "and I will provide you the perfect watch."

When Breguet was coming up as an apprentice, he had seen firsthand the extent to which friction impeded the advance of the watchmaker's art. Friction was the bête noire of watchmakers, an ever-present, entropic force working to shorten the life of a watch and diminish its accuracy. Each gear inside the watch that met with another - and that meant all of them - was affected by friction. Because of friction, the rubbing of metal on metal slowed the clock down and would eventually cause the whole mechanism to seize. Because of friction, gears could slip, and teeth and pivots could be rubbed away. Given enough time, a watch movement could conceivably turn into a pile of metal powder.

Breguet's predecessors had tried to combat the problem using solutions that could themselves be problematic. For centuries, the inner mechanisms of watches and clocks had been made of iron, and in an effort to mitigate friction watchmakers lubricated them with animal or fish oil (which is why some older clocks still stink of mackerel). But the oil itself would seize and bind, creating a gummy glue that kept gears from turning and left timepieces with an unpleasant odor - thus Breguet's plea for the perfect oil.

In an effort to find a new and better way, at a time when watches were becoming both more ornate and more precise, watchmakers began using rubies at pivot points for the gears. Although these polished jewels were considered rarities, they possessed a "hardness and capability of taking a high polish"65 that metal parts didn't have, often didn't require oil, and were relatively immune to temperature changes. There were a number of types of jewels, including "hole" jewels that kept wheel axles (called arbors) in place, and cap jewels that tipped arbors inside their holes. Jewelers eventually also used pallet jewels on the tiny fork that drives the escape wheel and, in turn, spins the registers. In all cases, the jewels acted as a sort of "glove" or cap to prevent metal from touching metal.

Similarly, watchmakers began polishing almost every surface of their creations both for aesthetic reasons and because smooth surfaces meant less friction. In Switzerland, what came to be called the Geneva style - beveled edges, mirrored surfaces, and minuscule tolerances between parts - was invented, presaging the science of precision instruments by almost a half-century.