thumb|Pierre Jaquet-Droz

Pierre Jaquet-Droz (; 1721–1790) was a watchmaker of the late eighteenth century. He was born on 28 July 1721 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, in the Principality of Neuchâtel.

After studying mathematics, physics and theology at the universities of Basel and Neuchâtel, Jaquet-Droz served a watchmaking apprenticeship under the local pendulier Josué Robert and established his first workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1738. His reputation grew beyond Swiss borders when, in 1758, he travelled to the Spanish court of Ferdinand VI to present a series of clocks fitted with automata, a journey that brought him sufficient wealth to devote himself to a more ambitious project: the construction of human-looking androids.

He lived in Paris, London, and Geneva, where he designed and built animated dolls known as automata to help his firm sell watches and mechanical caged songbirds.

Building on the success of his automata, Pierre Jaquet-Droz opened a workshop in London in 1774 under the direction of his son Henri-Louis, where the firm benefited from the city’s established trading links with the Far East, China in particular, and where Jaquet-Droz watches and automata were channelled to the imperial court at the Forbidden City. A third workshop was inaugurated in Geneva in 1784, specialising in the production and export of luxury watches incorporating automata, musical mechanisms and singing-bird boxes. The firm ceased activity in the early nineteenth century following the deaths of Pierre (1790) and Henri-Louis (1791).

The Jaquet Droz luxury watch brand is now owned by The Swatch Group.

The Jaquet Droz name was revived as a luxury watch brand in the twentieth century and became part of The Swatch Group in 2000. In summer 2010, the brand opened a new Fine Watchmaking workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds, on the very site where Pierre Jaquet-Droz had established his first manufacture in 1738.

Notable works

The Jaquet-Droz androids belong to a broader fascination with the mechanical reproduction of life that characterised the Age of Enlightenment: a generation earlier, the French mechanician Jacques de Vaucanson (1709–1782) had unveiled his “Flute Player” (1738) and mechanical Digesting Duck (1744), establishing the courtly appetite for ingenious androids that the Jaquet-Droz family would later satisfy on a still grander scale.

Constructed between 1768 and 1774 by Pierre Jaquet-Droz, his son Henri-Louis (1752–1791), and Jean-Frédéric Leschot (1746–1824), the automata include The Writer (made of 6000 pieces), The Musician (2500 pieces), and The Draughtsman (2000 pieces).

Leschot, the son of a neighbour informally adopted by the Jaquet-Droz family, was an essential collaborator on the trio of androids, which drew on the naturalist sensibility then prevalent among eighteenth-century artists and philosophers; this fascination with living forms would also inspire Jaquet-Droz’s celebrated mechanical singing birds.

His astonishing mechanisms fascinated the kings and emperors of Europe, China, India and Japan.

Some consider these devices to be the oldest examples of the computer. The Writer, a mechanical boy who writes with a quill pen upon paper with real ink, has an input device to set tabs, defining individual letters written by the boy, that form a programmable memory. It has 40 cams that represent the read-only program. The work of Pierre Jaquet-Droz predates that of Charles Babbage by decades.

The automata of Jaquet-Droz are considered to be some of the finest examples of human mechanical problem solving. Three particularly complex and still functional dolls, now known as the Jaquet-Droz automata, are housed at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire (art and history museum) in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

He once constructed a clock that was capable of the following surprising movements:<blockquote>There were seen on it a negro, a dog, and a shepherd; when the clock struck, the shepherd played six tunes on his flute, and the dog approached and fawned upon him. This clock was exhibited to the King of Spain, who was delighted with it. "The gentleness of my dog," said Droz, "is his least merit; if your Majesty touch one of the apples, which you see in the shepherd's basket, you will admire the fidelity of this animal." The King took an apple, and the dog flew at his hand, and barked so loud, that the King's dog, which was in the room, began also to bark; at this the Courtiers, not doubting that it was an affair of witchcraft, hastily left the room, crossing themselves as they went out. The minister of Marine was the only one that ventured to stay. The king having desired him to ask the negro what o'clock it was, the minister obeyed, but he obtained no reply. Droz then observed, that the negro had not yet learned Spanish.</blockquote>

thumb|The [[Jaquet-Droz automata]]

Further reading

  • Perregaux, Charles, Les Jaquet-Droz et leurs automates, Neuchâtel, 1906
  • Perregaux, Charles et Perrot, François-Louis, Les Jaquet-Droz et Leschot, Neuchâtel, 1916
  • Chapuis, Alfred et Gélis, Edouard, Le monde des automates, Paris, 1928
  • Chapuis, Alfred et Droz, Edmond, Les automates, figures artificielles d'hommes et d'animaux, Neuchâtel, 1949
  • Maingot, Eliane, Les automates, Paris, 1959
  • Carrera, Roland, Loiseau, Dominique et Olivier Roux, Androïdes. Les automates Jaquet-Droz, Lausanne, 1979
  • Beaune, Jean-Claude, L'automate et ses mobiles, Paris, 1980
  • Tissot, André, Voyage de Pierre Jaquet-Droz à la Cour du Roi d'Espagne 1758-1759, Neuchâtel, 1982
  • Beyer, Annette, Faszinierende Welt der Automaten, Munich, 1983
  • Collectif, The Cyborg Handbook, London, 1995
  • Vanden Berghe, Marc, Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz et Pierre Jaquet-Droz in Biographies Neuchâteloises, tome I, *Hauterive, Attinger, 1996
  • Collectif, Die Androïden: zur Poetologie des Automaten, Bern, Peter Lang, 1996

See also

  • Maillardet's automaton
  • Android
  • Humanoid robot
  • Singing bird box

References

  • Pierre Jaquet-Droz, in the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland
  • Montres Jaquet-Droz
  • Story of the Jaquet-Droz androids, virtual museum and DVD
  • Jaquet-Droz

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