Jean André Lepaute ( November 23, 1720 in Thonne-la-Long ; April 11 , 1789 in Saint-Cloud ) was a French royal watchmaker . 

Jean André Lepaute was born as one of nine children of the 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 become an apprentice to a clockmaker. He later founded his own company there. His reputation as a clockmaker earned him many commissions for the construction of large public clocks . In 1747, his younger brother, Jean Baptiste Lepaute, came to Paris to join the company.

During this time, he received a commission to build a large clock for the Palais du Luxembourg . Upon 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 watchmaker for Louis XV .

In 1754, the then young Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais showed Jean André Lepaute a new escapement he had invented, the so-called double comma escapement . Lepaute immediately recognized the significance of this invention and published it under his own name at the French Academy of Sciences in 1754. When Pierre Augustin Caron noticed it, he immediately wrote to the Academy. With the help of an article in the Parisian newspaper Mercure de France , which had reported on Beaumarchais's double comma escapement even before Lepaute's publications, he was able to clearly prove that Beaumarchais was the originator of the new escapement. The Academy followed 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 one 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.

In 1750, he presented his comma escapement to the public. Almost at the same time, Jean-Antoine Lépine also used an escapement of similar construction for his watches.

In 1751, Lepaute made some pendulum clocks with only one wheel.

In 1753 he improved the scissor escapement and introduced it generally for wall and bracket clocks .

Around 1770, he created an atmospheric clock for the Academy of Sculpture that wound itself using air currents. The Lepaute company was also known for producing pendulum clocks with digital displays.