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The Watchmaker of his Time
Abraham- Louis Perrelet
(1729-1826)

Abraham - Louis Perrelet was born into a modest family in Le Locle Switzerland on 9 January 1729. His father Daniel earned his living as a farmer and carpenter but, during the long winter months, turned his hand to watchmaking .Abraham Louis showed an early interest in his father's work .

Being a practical young man, he began by inventing and making the tools he needed to fulfill his ambition: uprighting tools, rounding-off tools and tools for making cylinder escapement . His Workshop became a veritable horological research laboratory.  He was the first in Le Locle to make watches with cylinder, date, equation and duplex escapement.

Abraham -Louis Perrelet was recognized by  his peers as one of the greatest watch-makers of the period. For many Years , he trained practically every watchmaker in Le Locle: among his many apprentices were  Jacques-Frederic Houriet (1743-1830), The father of the Swiss chronometer...and louis Frederic Perrelet (1781-1854) watchmaker to  the kings of France...as well as Abraham Louis Breguet.

Whenever watchmakers in the region came up against a problem in their work , they would consult Perrelet . He was always reach to help them out and bring them up to date on his research and discoveries .

It all began when he had to find a practical solution to the common problem of what to do when people forgot to wind their watches . Drawing on his imagination, he came up with an original idea.  Why not incorporate in the watch's movement a freely-oscillating weight that would create the necessary energy to wind the mainspring ?

It was here that Perrelet again revealed his genius as a technician .

Perrelet's invention of the automatic watch put him a century and a half ahead of his time.  Abraham-Louis Perrelet spent his whole life in Le Locle at the family home, at 5 Cret-Vaillant  Le Locle Switzerland.

The world's first automatic watch Abraham-Louis Perrelet, circa 1770