Jaquet Droz

Pierre Jaquet-Droz was born at La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1721 and built, between 1768 and 1774, three automata that are still working: The Writer, The Draughtsman and The Musician. The Writer is the remarkable one. A stack of cams inside the figure encodes each letter, and the text it writes can be changed by resetting them — which makes it, by a reasonable reading, one of the earliest programmable machines. All three are in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Neuchâtel and are demonstrated to the public on the first Sunday of each month.

He used the automata as a sales tool, touring the courts of Europe and China to sell the clocks and watches the workshop made. It worked: the firm became one of the first European watchmakers with a serious trade into China.

The modern company was relaunched in the 1990s and bought by the Swatch Group in 2000. The Grande Seconde layout it uses on most models — two overlapping dials forming a figure eight — is taken directly from a pocket watch the original workshop made in the eighteenth century, and the appetite for moving figures survives in its automaton pieces.

Jaquet Droz holds 1 model, from £8,950 to £8,950. Half cost less than £8,950, and a quarter less than £8,950. 1 of 1 is automatic. 1 is stocked by more than one retailer, giving 2 offers in total. Prices are checked nightly against the retailers’ own feeds.

1738

Pierre Jaquet-Droz begins making clocks at La Chaux-de-Fonds

1774

The three automata are completed and toured through Europe

2000

The Swatch Group acquires the revived brand