There are suggestions that he was a blacksmith or a locksmith, and Kathleen Pritchard, in " Swiss Timepiece Makers 1775-1975" says he was "probably" a goldsmith. Little is known of Daniel JeanRichard's background. The ancestors of the family JeanRichard were called Richard, but one of them had been given the christian name Jean and for some reason this was carried forward as the unusual double second name JeanRichard during the following centuries. Some records give JeanRichard's birth year as 1665, but Jaquet and Chapuis refer to documentary evidence from local archives which shows that it was 1672. Due to the altitude and the lack of water, with porous limestone underground, the land around Le Locle is poorly suited to farming, and the area is often snow bound in the winter, so the inhabitants of this region were always on the look out for work that they could do indoors during the cold winter months. Neuchâtel is higher at 430 m (1,411 ft), but Le Locle is 945 m (3,100 ft) above sea level, much higher still. Geneva itself is 373.6 meters (1225.7 ft) above sea level, already high enough. This area is in the Jura mountains, high above the town and lake of Neuchâtel, far removed from the then Swiss watchmaking centre of Geneva. The Swiss Jura mountains were the home of the Swiss watch industryĭaniel JeanRichard was born in 1672 in Les Bressels, La Sagne, half way between Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds in what is now the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Daniel JeanRichard began watchmaking outside of Geneva, away from the control of the guilds that had kept production of watches to small numbers. The manufacture of small numbers of very expensive watches by members of the restrictive watchmakers guilds was hardly an industry. Before the invention of the balance spring watches were poor timekeepers and were more curiosities, made of precious metals and richly decorated. In the sixteenth century the first watchmakers were located in Southern Germany, then France and Geneva areas with wealthy princes, aristocrats and merchants who were prepared to pay a high price for an item they could show off to their peers. Daniel JeanRichard and the birth of the Swiss watch industry In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries almost every Swiss watch was made in Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds or the surrounding areas, gradually expanding North and East towards Biel/Bienne. The industry grew rapidly during the eighteenth century. JeanRichard started watchmaking in the Jura mountains, giving employment to local farmers who could not work outdoors during the long winter months. This continued until the later half of the 17th century in Switzerland when Daniel JeanRichard, a man who was not prepared to go along with the accepted order of things, changed everything. As a result of this, the reputation of Geneva watches for quality was kept high, as were the prices. Mass production was banned, the number of apprentices kept artificially low, and entry to the guild (and thus permission to make watches) strictly controlled. The guild ensured that the quality of watches made by its members was maintained at the highest levels, but also restricted practices that could have increased the numbers made and reduced the cost of watches. In 1601 the Watchmakers Guild of Geneva of Geneva was established to control the trade in and around Geneva. A hundred years later there were over 100 watchmakers registered in Geneva, who employed more than 300 workmen and manufactured nearly 5,000 watches a year. Sales of watches received a considerable boost when Calvinist reforms banned the wearing jewellery and goldsmiths offered decorative watches as an alternative. The making of watches came to Switzerland in the 16th century, in 1587, when it was introduced to Geneva by Charles Cusin of Autun, Burgundy. Clocks were known there in the ninth century, probably imported from southern Germany, and were quite common by the eleventh century. Bocks and Rams: IWC and Stauffer Trademarks.
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