Stop The Clock: Montblanc Honours a Genius

At a horse race on the Champ de Mars in 1822, Parisian watchmaker Nicolas Rieussec unveiled his time-writing machine, an instrument capable of recording and measuring short intervals of time. Housed in a wooden box, the machine he called a chronograph – from the Greek chrono (time) and grapho (to write) – comprised two rotating enamel dials on top of a watch movement. Above the dials, one for minutes and another for seconds, was a hand with ink-filled nibs attached. At the press of a button, the nibs would gently touch the dials and leave a mark, enabling the race’s timekeeper to record the exact finishing time of each horse without having to divert his attention from the action on the track.

So successful was Rieussec’s time-writing machine that the race track’s directors made it their official time-measuring device and the French patent office granted him a patent on the first genuinely practical chronograph.

This year marks the 190th anniversary of the invention (Rieussec built his first chronograph in 1821, the year before the race on the Champ de Mars), and Montblanc, understandably for a brand best known for its writing instruments but with a growing presence in the world of horology, has given the date special focus. This year has seen the release of an Anniversary edition of Montblanc’s Nicolas Rieussec Chronograph, a Rieussec-inspired Horological TimeWriter table clock and an exhibition held in partnership with the Musée International d’Horlogerie in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, on the history of the chronograph.

The Rieussec Chronograph, originally launched in 2008, takes obvious inspiration from its namesake’s invention. Where most contemporary chronographs use static dials with moving hands, on Montblanc’s innovative timepiece it’s the dials that rotate around fixed needles, echoing the 1821 original. The watch has been subtly altered for 2011, with the centre section of the dial removed to expose the date wheel and part of the movement, and the outer dial decorated with a grain de seigle guilloché pattern. It also houses Montblanc’s hand-wound MB R110 calibre, designed and made in-house at the company’s manufacture in Le Locle, the birthplace of Swiss watchmaking.

The table clock, designated the Nicolas Rieussec Horological TimeWriter, is encased in a glass dome. It has a large face indicating the time, along with two smaller rotating chronograph sub-dials (essentially an enlarged version of those found in the wristwatch) and two power-reserve indicators, one for the traditional time mechanism and one for the chronograph. A watch-winding mechanism sits above the clock, which comes with a matching automatic version of the wristwatch in 18-carat rose gold.

A limited edition of only 19 will be made.

Rieussec’s 1821 machine looks distinctly modest by comparison, yet it remains a crucial, ground-breaking part of horological history.

Montblanc’s exhibition ‘Writing Time – Two Centuries Of Chronograph History’ will be at Sotheby's London from 10-14 December; sothebys.com; montblanc.com