Louis Moinet
Brand History
The name Louis Moinet belongs first of all to a real French watchmaker, active between the late eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century (1768-1853), known in his time as a refined craftsman and author of watchmaking treatises. He is today credited with the invention of the chronograph: an instrument called the "compteur de tierces" (sixtieth-of-a-second counter), begun in 1815 and completed in 1816, designed to time the transit of celestial bodies with a precision of one sixtieth of a second, thanks to a balance wheel of extremely high frequency for the period. The instrument, long remained almost unknown, was only rediscovered in recent times, and its dating was verified and certified by Guinness World Records, which in 2016 officially recognized Louis Moinet as the inventor of the first chronograph in history.
The contemporary watch brand bearing his name, however, was born much later, in 2004, when Jean-Marie Schaller and Micaela Bartolucci founded the maison Les Ateliers Louis Moinet in Auvernier, Switzerland, with the stated intent of paying homage to this historical figure and bringing his legacy back to light. Schaller, who had discovered the original compteur de tierces by chance, built the entire identity of the modern maison around this discovery, today based in Saint-Blaise, in the canton of Neuchâtel.
Since then Louis Moinet has developed a catalogue of small-series high watchmaking, often in editions limited to a few dozen or a handful of pieces, characterized by two recurring threads: on one hand, a direct homage to the historical chronograph of its ideal founder, and on the other, a theme linked to astronomy and space, which recalls precisely the original purpose of the 1816 instrument — the observation of celestial bodies — reinterpreted as artistic watchmaking, with the use of authentic fragments of lunar and Martian meteorites.
