Jaeger-LeCoultre

Before Antoine LeCoultre could make small watch parts consistently, he needed better tools. He developed a machine for cutting steel pinions—the small toothed parts that pass motion through a watch—and opened his workshop in Le Sentier in 1833. In 1844 he made the Millionometre, an instrument for taking finer measurements of components.

The tools mattered because a watch is an assembly of parts that must fit and move together. Better measurement could make them more consistent and smaller. In 1866, Antoine and his son Élie brought the different watchmaking crafts into a larger manufacture under one roof.

Another relationship began in 1903. Edmond Jaeger, working in Paris, had designs for exceptionally thin movements and challenged Swiss manufacturers to make them. Jacques-David LeCoultre accepted. Their collaboration produced thin pocket-watch mechanisms long before their names were formally joined as Jaeger-LeCoultre in 1937.

The manufacture became a supplier as well as a maker of complete watches. Its movements appeared in the work of other houses, so its history cannot be followed only through names printed on dials. At home, technical experiments could lead to very different objects: a thin pocket watch, a clock or the mechanism inside a reversible wristwatch.