Since earliest antiquity, humans have ventured to build devices for measuring time. After countless attempts with varying degrees of success, they settled on a bulky item: the clock tower. This was in the Middle Ages. Only for a while though, as a portable timepiece would have been more appropriate. The difficulty lay in the motor weights: it was still not known what to replace them with. Soon the discovery of the mainspring would overcome this impasse to huge advantage. It was now simply a question of skilfulness, of fine workmanship needed to build a smaller clock: the watch.

Basel and Geneva gain a monopoly in watchmaking

In the Swiss region of Jura, it was probably during the 16th century that its manufacture gained sufficient importance for the men of the day to deem it necessary to set down in writing matters relating to it. At that time, local town trades were still organised into powerful corporations and the watch, a delicate and prized luxury item - a veritable jewel - quickly found its natural master to be the goldsmith, whose trade was also governed by juries. 

Goldsmiths started making watches in Geneva and Basel. During the Middle Ages and then the Renaissance, these two towns had acquired a certain importance in metals trading and were soon seen to confer privileges on one another to boost work in precious metals. They became renowned further afield for their goldware, and the watch followed suit. In the city on the Rhine, however, corporate regulations mattered more than a blossoming industry. And so the Basel watch was strangled at birth.

The Genevan watch would perhaps have suffered the same fate were it not for two propitious events: the presence of Calvin and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The reformer required goldsmiths to change their activities in favour of watches and forbade them from making "crucifixes, chalices or other instruments serving the papacy and idolatry". This second event resulted in the expulsion to the Swiss cantons, and Geneva in particular, of a large number of French citizens following in the footsteps of other refugees fleeing religious persecution. Many of these Huguenots were craftsmen and gave an enormous boost to the already established Genevan watch industry, to the detriment of this same industry in France. The town expanded suddenly and dramatically, leaving the corporations somewhat shaken.

The clockmakers' corporations organise themselves

The "orlogiers" - one of many terms used to refer to horologists - soon became fairly powerful and felt the need in 1601 to organise themselves into their own guilds. These guilds were already less tolerant than the goldsmiths' guilds established some forty years earlier: the honourable profession needed protection as it risked being debased by all and sundry. The small towns on the shores of Lake Geneva, Nyon and Rolle emulated what was happening in Geneva. Later on, case-makers and then engravers would in turn gain control. These corporations made a distinction between three traditional grades: the master, the companion and the apprentice. An horologist's apprenticeship was long. He would serve a period of between five to eight years depending on where he was training, before delivering his "masterpiece". And the rules did not prescribe any one specific piece; in one place it would be a watch, somewhere else a clock, or indeed "two watches with movement" to quote the terms of a contract drawn up at that time.

The master horologist, at the turn of the 17th century, was no longer an artisan in the full sense of the word. Unlike his grandfather, he no longer set out with the necessary tools to make all the components of a watch by himself. Specialists were already to be found within the corporation. Foremost among them were two groups: the first comprising master horologists who made watches, the second comprising master horologists who traded in them. The former would work at home, in a room: these were the forebears of the famous "cabinotier" of the Saint-Gervais district. The latter kept shop on the street; they sought out new markets, either personally or through brokers, and paved the way for the system later known as "établissage".

Now that it was well organised and had imposed its monopoly de facto and de jure, the Geneva Watchmakers' Corporation sold its products worldwide, in France, England, Germany, Russia and the Orient, throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Such a burgeoning business naturally led to changes in the way watchmakers worked. The specialisation introduced by the first guilds began to feature more prominently and gave rise to regulatory restrictions half a century later, making way for work in "broken parts". This therefore led to the appearance of makers of springs, blanks or ébauches, tools, and chains - this last speciality being the preserve of women. Entrepreneurial masters or companions dissatisfied with their status would take the industry into the neighbouring countryside.

The division of labour in watchmaking gives rise to other specialisations.

At the end of the 17th century, the manufacturing members of the corporation - the majority - were fearful that outside work might harm wages and prices and so imposed measures on the entire profession to prevent the monopoly from slipping out of their grasp. Having no effective means of directly reducing the advance of watchmaking outside Geneva, they acted indirectly by banning ébauche work within the precinct of the town; furthermore, they prohibited finishing work from being carried out anywhere other than Geneva. These measures thus fostered a qualitative separation of labour. Featuring among the discarded jobs was the blank, the manufacture of which had very swiftly been left to the companions.

The link between the rough-hewn parts and the finishing work was provided by the master watchmaker-trader who would steadily assume, as the effects of the Industrial Revolution made themselves felt, the role of production supervisor. The other masters would work for him individually or in association, along with workers outside Geneva operating from small workshops or from home. He therefore came to be known as the "établisseur", as specific a term as it is literal. 

Among his suppliers were those who delivered incomplete pieces of the watch movement, the blank or the ébauche. They were known in Geneva as blanquiers or blantiers, elsewhere as mouvementaires, and would occupy an increasingly conspicuous place in the watch industry. Some of them would trade the incomplete pieces on their own account and would become the second rallying point in the division of labour prevailing at that time. Their activity was similar to that of the établisseurs but was one rung lower in the production hierarchy. The opportunity to establish themselves would often be provided by trade in metals. Those involved in this type of trade were not only able to deliver the raw material needed to make the incomplete pieces but also to advance funds to the companions or workers who crafted them. This workforce, scattered throughout the countryside, did not suffer directly from corporate constraints and engaged willingly in work which, though poorly remunerated, significantly improved the everyday lot of farming which was often weighed down with costs.

Thus the first ébauche makers came into being. The piece they made or sold came to be known as a blank because its metal - brass - was left blank. The blank comprised the movement part known as the "cage" or frame, designed to support all the fixed or moveable components of the movement. It consisted of two large metal plates and one smaller plate: the bottom plate, the large bridge and the balance cock, kept apart from one another by pillars. The large bridge would subsequently be replaced by several small bridges designed to affix one or more trains. In addition, the frame housed some moveable pieces such as the barrel - a round box containing the mainspring - the fusee - a truncated cone with spiral grooves for winding the chord or transmission chain unwound by the barrel - and sometimes the gears. However, the blank never contained the escapement, i.e. the device which regulates the watch. All these parts were rough-hewn in metal - hence the French name "ébauche" - roughly filed and unpolished. They were refined and finished - or "completed" in today's parlance - in Geneva. One need only think of the fineness of a watch mechanism to realise the importance placed on the finishing work of the artisans of the Genevan corporation. Expelled from Geneva, the blantiers would go on to show the corporation which of the two, the ébauche or finishing, would gain from the change.