(Antoine) Jean-Baptiste Delettrez (1 May 1816 – 25 May 1887) was a renowned 19th-century

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

clockmaker. Delettrez and

Achille Brocot Louis Achille Brocot (pronounced "broco") (11 July 1817 – 19 January 1878) was a French clockmaker. and amateur mathematician.. He is known for his discovery (contemporaneously with, but independently of, German number theorist Moritz Stern) of ...

, son of the respected clockmaker Louis-Gabriel Brocot, established the clockmaking company "Brocot et Delettrez" in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

on 20 October 1851, with premises at 62 Rue Charlot. Delettrez worked alongside Achille Brocot for several years and their clock movements are considered to be the most effective made during the late 19th century

Their speciality was a range of clocks based on the innovations of Brocot père and his other son Antoine, but generally of Achille's greatly advanced original design, some having a unique single-arm double-wheel

escapement An escapement is a mechanical linkage in mechanical watches and clocks that gives impulses to the timekeeping element and periodically releases the gear train to move forward, advancing the clock's hands. The impulse action transfers energy to ...

, some having a temperature-compensated

pendulum A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting, equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward the ...

, some having two dials, one of which showed the time and the other which showed a

calendar A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physi ...

and often other information such as

phases of the moon Concerning the lunar month of ~29.53 days as viewed from Earth, the lunar phase or Moon phase is the shape of the Moon's directly sunlit portion, which can be expressed quantitatively using areas or angles, or described qualitatively using the t ...

, times of

sunrise Sunrise (or sunup) is the moment when the upper rim of the Sun appears on the horizon in the morning. The term can also refer to the entire process of the solar disk crossing the horizon and its accompanying atmospheric effects. Terminology Al ...

sunset Sunset, also known as sundown, is the daily disappearance of the Sun below the horizon due to Earth's rotation. As viewed from everywhere on Earth (except the North and South poles), the equinox Sun sets due west at the moment of both the spring ...

in Paris, etc. The firm was awarded a 1st class prize at the Paris World Exposition of 1857 for a commercial clock of this type. This innovative and fruitful partnership continued until the death of Brocot fils in 1878, after which event Delettrez continued on his own. His typical later product was a conventional 8-day mantle clock that struck the hours and half-hours, still based on the standard Brocot escapement and suspension that he had helped to refine. These elegant and much-admired timepieces were typically made to order for retailers, including several in Britain, with dials carrying the name of the retailer rather than that of their maker, but whose mechanism was stamped with the

cartouche In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the fea ...

(JBD). He married his cousin Caroline Delettrez in Paris on 2 April 1845. They had two sons, Louis and Jules, both of whom later carried on the family tradition of

metalworking Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on every scale ...

, the former as a manufacturer of

bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such ...

objets d'art In art history, the French term Objet d’art describes an ornamental work of art, and the term Objets d’art describes a range of works of art, usually small and three-dimensional, made of high-quality materials, and a finely-rendered finish th ...

and the latter as a

goldsmith A goldsmith is a Metalworking, metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Nowadays they mainly specialize in jewelry-making but historically, goldsmiths have also made cutlery, silverware, platter (dishware), pl ...

References

1816 births 1887 deaths French clockmakers French artisans {{France-artist-stub