FROM MUSIC BOXES TO POCKET WATCHES

Before Antoine LeCoultre turned to watchmaking, he and his father invented a new type of ‘keyboard’ for mechanical music boxes. Cut from a single piece of metal and shaped like a comb (peigne in French), it improved the quality of the sound, and prevented the instrument from detuning. Variations of this device became standard for almost all music boxes. Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Heritage Collection features an early example from the 1820s, fitted with a LeCoultre ‘Peigne’ mechanism and set in a finely decorated tortoise-shell box.

After it was established in 1833, the LeCoultre atelier quickly gained a reputation for both inventiveness and quality and, by the 1860s, was known for its complicated watch movements, incorporating calendars, chronographs and chiming mechanisms. Around 1880, a decade after developing its first minute repeater, the Manufacture LeCoultre created Calibre 19/20 RMS, a Minute Repeater with Three Hammers, rather than the standard two hammers and gongs. Thanks to the third hammer, it creates a unique melody, with a distinctive three-note chime for the quarters.

As the Maison broadened its expertise, watchmakers also incorporated automata into chiming watches. The best-loved of these were jacquemarts – human figures with articulated limbs, set on the watch dial. Animated by the watch movement to coincide with the striking of time, they provide a visual representation of the chime. The intricate dial of an early 1890s Jacquemart Pocket Watch by LeCoultre, features a pair of jacquemarts in a romantic scene, decorated with enamel and engraving.

In 1895, Jaeger-LeCoultre invented and patented the silent strike-governor, also known as the silent regulator. This eliminated the background buzz characteristic of traditional regulators, thus producing a clearer chime. Different versions of that invention have since become an industry standard in chiming watches. Among the examples in the Heritage Collection is a 1914 pocket watch powered by Calibre 19 IMCCV, which unites a mono-pusher chronograph and a minute repeater.

In the early 20th century, LeCoultre was one of the few Manufactures to master triple-complication watch movements. For the 1910 Minute Repeater Triple Complication, LeCoultre Calibre 19/20IMCSQ brought together a minute repeater, a chronograph and a perpetual calendar in a classical hunter-style case.

To create an aesthetic worthy of the technical complexity, decorative crafts were often lavished on the more complicated watches. In a 1928 Lépine-style pocket watch, LeCoultre Calibre 17JSMCCRVQ combined a minute repeater with a perpetual calendar and a chronograph, providing a magnificent canvas for the crafts of skeletonisation, enamelling and engraving. Lépine refers to a style of watch movement architecture developed in the 1760s by the French watchmaker Jean-Antoine Lépine, which made calibres thinner.

MEMOVOX

In the mid 20th Century, as people increasingly sought watches with practical functions, Jaeger-LeCoultre drew on its mastery of chiming mechanisms to develop alarm watches. In this form of chiming calibre, the extremely rapid strikes of the hammer create a continuous single-pitch sound, closer to a buzz than to the bell-like chime of a minute repeater. The Memovox (its name, taken from Latin, means ‘voice of the memory’) has remained the reference in alarm watches for 70 years.

In 1950, the Maison introduced Calibre 489 in the first Memovox watch. The design was classically understated: on the dial, a triangular pointer on a mobile central disc indicated the alarm time, and the two crowns – one for winding and time-setting and the other to set the alarm – were set close to the case-sides.

Having created its first automatic wristwatch movement in 1946, the Manufacture launched the first automatic alarm movement, Calibre 815, a decade later. The oscillating weight is fixed at the centre of the movement, its swings limited by two bumpers, equipped with tiny shock-absorbing springs.

In 1958, Jaeger-LeCoultre introduced the Memovox Calibre 814 in two new variations. With international businessmen in mind, the Memovox International incorporated a 24-hour world time display on the dial’s inner disc. The Memovox Parking was designed to help motorists avoid fines for exceeding the pre-paid time on their parking meters by buzzing when the allotted time expired.

In 1959, responding to the rapid growth of leisure diving and the corresponding demand for purpose-built watches, Jaeger-LeCoultre introduced the world’s first diving watch with an alarm, the Memovox Deep Sea (Cal. 815). To enhance underwater safety, the alarm sound provides an acoustic signal and the vibration of the watch a tactile reminder of the elapsed diving time.

Introduced in 1963 and updated in 1968 with the addition of a date display (Cal. 825), the Memovox Polaris further enhanced the diving functionality of the alarm watch. A rotating inner bezel provides a visual indication of elapsed dive time, and a super-compressor case with a triple-layered caseback amplifies the alarm sound when submerged, while ensuring water resistance to 200 metres.

In 1970 the Memovox Speedbeat introduced Calibre 916, the first of a new generation of higher-frequency automatic movements by Jaeger-LeCoultre. Increasing the balance-wheel frequency to 28,800 vph made the movement more stable and thus more accurate. A new automatic winding system introduced an oscillating weight that turned 360 degrees around its axis to wind the mainspring.

Fitted with Calibre 918, the Master Réveil was introduced in 1994. In this new alarm mechanism, the hammer struck a gong rather than striking directly on the case, as it had done previously. The result was the distinctive ‘school bell’ sound that has remained the signature of Memovox to this day. The Master Réveil was also the first Memovox to undergo the demanding 1,000 Hours Test, which is recognised as one of the most stringent in-house quality control protocols in the watchmaking industry.

This great legacy in chiming watches has provided Jaeger-LeCoultre with a deep well of expertise on which it continues to draw to this day. The Manufacture’s constant evolution of its chiming watch repertoire epitomises the deep respect for tradition and constant quest for innovation that have driven La Grande Maison throughout its 187-year history.

The long, harsh winters have contributed to the development of two sounds that are special signatures of the valley. Due to the cold, the spruce forests grow slowly here, producing a wood with exceptional resonance qualities, which has been sought after by luthiers for centuries. The icy winters meant countless hours spent indoors, allowing the valley’s early watchmakers the time needed to develop and build complicated chiming watches.

In 2020, Jaeger-LeCoultre celebrates THE SOUND MAKER, paying homage to its valley and its great legacy of chiming timepieces, expressing a century and a half of accumulated expertise in fresh new ways.

THE SOUND OF TIME

For more than 600 years, the passing hours have been marked by sound, with people all over Europe organising their daily routines according to the chimes of the turret clocks on village churches and town halls. Indeed, the word clock itself is derived from “cloche”, the Old French word for bell (which can in turn be traced back to the Latin “clocca” – the sound of a chime).

It is often said that minute repeaters – tiny versions of those historic clocks – were invented in the era before electric light so that people could tell the time in the dark. It is a charming story, if not entirely true. The real impetus for the miniaturisation of chiming timepieces came from the early watchmakers’ fervent desire to innovate, and from their wealthy clients’ wish to possess these wearable symbols of status and connoisseurship.

In this, the Manufacture’s founder Antoine LeCoultre played a key role, not just as a watchmaker, but as the inventor of machines that could measure and cut components more accurately and on a smaller scale than ever before. As a result, the Vallée de Joux became celebrated for producing both chiming watches and music boxes of ever-greater complexity, smaller size and more beautiful sound.

A DISTINGUISHED HISTORY

Considered by watchmakers to be the most challenging – and rewarding – of all horological complications to master, a minute repeater is not only a timepiece but also a miniaturised musical instrument. To make such a watch requires an ear for music as well as extreme dexterity.

Since producing its first minute repeater in 1870, Jaeger-LeCoultre has developed more than 200 chiming watch calibres, producing some 100 minute repeaters before the year 1900. It has mastered all forms, from relatively simple alarms to the most complex of all, the grand sonnerie and Westminster chimes. Until the mid-20th century, while making repeater and sonnerie watches under its own name, La Grande Maison also supplied chiming movements to many of the most exalted names in watchmaking.

Although the structure of chiming watch mechanisms has remained essentially unchanged since the early 19th century, Jaeger-LeCoultre has constantly worked to improve both the mechanical efficiency of its movements and the clarity and beauty of the sound being produced. Its early innovations included cathedral gongs (1870) and a triple-hammer mechanism (1880). In 1895, the Maison invented the silent strike governor, thus eliminating the background buzz characteristic of traditional lever type regulators. Today, versions of that invention are used in almost all chiming watches. In 1900, Jaeger-LeCoultre produced the first ultra-thin minute repeater.

In the mid 20th century, as society changed and people increasingly sought watches with practical functions – whether for urban life or sporting activity – Jaeger-LeCoultre drew on its mastery of chiming mechanisms to develop alarm watches. While the hammer-and-gong mechanism of repeater watches is also used in the Memovox calibre, the extremely rapid strikes create a continuous single-pitch buzz, rather than a delicate bell-like chime.

Introduced in 1950, the Memovox – with its characteristic “school bell” sound – has remained the reference in alarm watches for 70 years. Over time, additional, practical functions have been offered, including a world time display and a car-parking reminder, and in 1959, the Maison introduced the world’s first diving watch with an alarm. Since 2000, the Memovox has reappeared in various forms, including in a perpetual calendar watch, a Master Compressor model and a series of diving-watch tribute pieces.

MARRYING TECHNOLOGY AND TRADITION

Since the mid-1990s, when La Grande Maison revisited its noble legacy of minute repeaters, its engineers and designers have worked to redefine the benchmark for acoustic quality, harnessing technology to serve and safeguard horology’s most treasured traditions.

Capitalising on the superior sound transmission qualities of synthetic sapphire crystal, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s patented ‘crystal gongs’ (introduced in 2005) are soldered directly to the dial crystal of the watch. The square-profile gongs introduced two years later provide a flat striking surface for the hammers, ensuring that the strikes are more consistent and more powerful. The articulated trebuchet hammers (introduced in 2009) use a similar mechanical principle to the medieval counterweight catapults that they are named after, to improve the speed and force of the hammer strike. A silent-interval reduction function, introduced in 2014’s Master Ultra Thin Minute Repeater Flying Tourbillon, 11^th opus of the Hybris Mechanica Collection, ensures that even when the quarter-hours are not struck, there is no time delay corresponding to those missing quarters before the minutes are struck.

In 2019, in Calibre 950, Jaeger-LeCoultre introduced a new ‘duplex’ gong design. Rather than lying in flat coils, the gongs make a circle before bending upwards then diverging to form two semi-circles around the top of the movement. In this way, by using the maximum space available within the case, acoustic resonance is significantly increased.

While constantly working to improve the mechanics of the strike-works, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s engineers have also met the challenge of combining repeaters with other complications, most recently uniting a perpetual calendar, the multi-axis Gyrotourbillon and a Westminster chiming mechanism (Calibre 184); combining a perpetual calendar with the new “duplex” gong system and automatic winding (Calibre 950); and bringing together a sidereal calendar and orbital flying tourbillon in this year’s new-generation Master Grande Tradition Grande Complication, (Calibre 945).

For 150 years, chiming watches have been a particular forte of Jaeger-LeCoultre, complementing its expertise in the other classic complications. This year, the new generation of striking watches takes the spotlight, honouring the Manufacture’s great patrimony, while reaffirming the spirit of innovation that has always driven La Grande Maison.