Life story of Jean André Lepaute, Royal Court Clockmaker of France
Jean André Lepaute (born November 23, 1720 in Thonne-la-Long ; † April 11, 1789 in Saint-Cloud ) was a French royal watchmaker .
Life
Jean André Lepaute was born one of nine children of toolmaker , locksmith and guild master André Lepaute and his wife Elisabeth Doulet.
In 1740, at the age of twenty, Jean André went to Paris to apprentice with a clockmaker. Later, he founded his own company there. His good reputation as a clockmaker helped him secure many commissions for the construction of large public clocks . In 1747, his younger brother, Jean Baptiste Lepaute, came to Paris to work in the company.
During this time, he received a commission to build a large clock for the Palais du Luxembourg . Upon the delivery of the clock, he met the astronomer Nicole-Reine Étable de la Brière . The two fell in love and married on August 27, 1748. From then on, Jean André lived in the Palais du Luxembourg. The young couple often entertained friends from aristocratic circles. Together with his wife Nicole, he worked on calculations for his astronomical clocks , calendar clocks, and planetary machines .
In 1751 he began working as a royal clockmaker for Louis XV .
In 1754, the then-young Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais demonstrated a new escapement he had invented, the so-called double-comma escapement , to Jean André Lepaute. Lepaute immediately recognized the significance of this invention and published it under his own name at the French Academy of Sciences in 1754. Upon learning of this, Pierre Augustin Caron immediately wrote to the Academy. Using an article from the Parisian newspaper Mercure de France , which had reported on Beaumarchais's double-comma escapement even before Lepaute's publications, he was able to definitively prove that Beaumarchais was the originator of the new escapement. The Academy accepted his argument and granted him the patent .
In 1774, Jean André Lepaute retired from the business, leaving it to his nephews Pierre-Basile Lepaute and Pierre Henry Lepaute . He died a year after his wife at the age of 68 in Saint Claude, near Paris. Jean André Lepaute was the founder of the Lepaute watchmaking dynasty.
Services
In 1750, he presented his comma escapement to the public. Almost simultaneously , Jean-Antoine Lépine also used an escapement of similar construction for his watches.
In 1751, Lepaute manufactured some pendulum clocks with only one wheel.
In 1753 he improved the scissor escapement and introduced it generally for wall and clocks .
Around 1770, he created a self-winding atmospheric clock for the Academy of Sculpture. The Lepaute company was also known for manufacturing pendulum clocks with digital displays.
Writings
Traité d'Horlogerie, contains all that is necessary for two connoître et pour régler les pendules et les montres, the description of the Pièces d'Horlogerie les plus utiles, des répétitions, des équations, des Pendules à une roue, &c. celle du new échpement, un traité des engrénages. Augmenté de la description d'une nouvelle pendule policamératique. ; Paris 1755
Source: Wikipedia
