Nicolas Mathieu Rieussec (20 July 1781 – 18 June 1866) was a French watchmaker.
Surname origin The Rieussec family's birthplace was the town of Lespinassière. Nicolas was the son of Joseph Rieussec, a merchant born in the 18th century in Lespinassière, in Languedoc, then one of the largest provinces in the kingdom of France. Today, Lespinassière is located in Aude, one of the five départements of the Languedoc-Roussillon region.
Ancestry
Joseph Rieussec was in Paris at the end of 1778, although no one knows when he left his birthplace, the town of Lespinassière, for the kingdom's capital. His wife, Jeanne Michateau, was expecting. On 20 January 1779 she gave birth to their first son, Nicolas Joseph. On 20 July 1781, a few years before the outbreak of a revolution that was to lead to an upheaval in France and all of Europe, a younger brother arrived and was named Nicolas Mathieu Rieussec. The baby was baptised three days after his birth in the parish of Sainte-Marie du Temple. Nicolas Mathieu Bogganio, a banker residing on the Rue des Victoires in Paris, stood godfather, and the godmother was Marie Victoire Griveau, also residing on the Rue des Victoires. Joseph Rieussec held a literary salon. On an unknown date, probably between 1786 and 1788, he remarried Cécile Paillard. The family grew with the arrival of a third child, Lucile Clotilde Cécile, born on 25 October 1788. She died in 1818. Joseph Rieussec died in 1838. Nicolas Mathieu was born in Paris. Several sources put his birth in Toulouse, sometimes on 1 September 1781, which is not supported by any documents. In contrast, the royal warrant naming Nicolas Mathieu a Watchmaker to the King, is accompanied by a baptismal certificate from the registry of the Sainte-Marie-du-Temple parish in Paris.
Early years Still a minor, young Rieussec was set up as a watchmaker at no. 14, Rue du Marché-Palu, on the Île de la Cité. The Almanac du commerce de Paris pour l’an XIII (Paris Business Yearbook for Year XIII), i.e., 1805, lists 190 watchmakers, including the renowned Breguet. Rieussec does not appear. In contrast, five years later, he is listed among the 222 watchmakers in Paris. He did business at no. 14, Rue du Marché-Palu. Married to Anne Marie Delan, he had a son named Joseph-Ferdinand, born on 15 December 1804, a few days after Napoleon was crowned Emperor of the French. Two years later, Rieussec became a widower. His wife, born 21 July 1780, died on 1 May 1806. Less than a year later, on 7 February 1807, Nicolas Mathieu married Marie Pierrette Flore Bourdin in Sainte-Marguerite church. Time passed. The year 1815 and Waterloo arrived, during which Napoleon and his Empire was swept away in defeat.
Watchmaker to the King
With the royalty restored, the throne passed to a Bourbon, Louis XVIII, brother of the late Louis XVI, who had been guillotined in 1793. All indications are that the new king did not consider Rieussec to be a loyal follower of Napoleon, or to have a black mark against his past. From 1817 on, Rieussec practiced his profession at no. 13, Rue Notre-Dame-des-Petits-Champs. Curiously, he also had a currency exchange there for an indeterminate period of time. That same year, the young watchmaker began to gain recognition when he was named a Watchmaker to the King in a royal warrant dated 31 January 1817. “On this thirty-first day of January, eighteen hundred and seventeen, the King at Paris, having been made fully aware of the good life and moral conduct of Sieur Nicolas Mathieu Rieussec, and of the distinguished reputation he has acquired in his profession of Watchmaker, desires to confer upon him a mark of his favour and of the protection with which he honours him; for this purpose, His Majesty has granted and does grant him the title of his Watchmaker so that said Sieur Rieussec can enjoy all the honours, prerogatives and other benefits thereunto appertaining; His Majesty desires and intends that he may use said Title at all gatherings and on all public documents […].”
In 1817, there were already five Watchmakers to the King in Paris: Lepaute, Le Roy, Lépine, Robin, and Lamygonge. Rieussec was the sixth. It was not by chance that this honour had been obtained. Since 1815/1816, Nicolas Mathieu had been entrusted with “maintenance of the clocks for the Minister of the King’s Household,” or in other words the Royal Furniture Depository. Created at the beginning of the 17th century, the Royal Furniture Depository was the government office responsible for managing furniture and artwork used to furnish and decorate the royal residences.
An ambitious man, Nicolas Mathieu Rieussec did not stop with this warrant. Scarcely had he been named a Watchmaker to the King when he sought another warrant as Watchmaker to the Crown's Furniture Depository. Between May and June 1817, Rieussec sent a letter to the Baron de la Ville d’Avray, the general superintendent of the Royal Furniture Depository. Having worked for the Depository for nearly two years, Rieussec considered that he had a right to this warrant. Such a request was astonishing, as witnessed by the following letter dated May or June 1817. “Now that Warrants as Watchmakers to the Royal Furniture Depository are being conferred, he feels that in asking for one, he is requesting only what is his due, since it is a consequence of his employment. Sieur Rieussec believes he is all the more justified since, out of six warrants with this title that were just conferred, only four of the watchmakers are, like himself, employed by the Royal Furniture Depository, and two (Messrs. Leroy and Lépine) are not at all, and so have been better treated than him if his request is not granted. Could the Watchmaker to the King warrant be regarded as a favour that would cause the other to be refused him? He cannot convince himself of that, for he values possession of the former too highly to believe that anyone could consider it a precluding honour. He therefore believes that the title of Watchmaker to the King does not influence the question of the other title in the slightest, and that that question is resolved by the legitimate rights conferred upon him by the duties he performs. Sieur Rieussec does not seek to hold two titles; his ambition was satisfied when he was granted the Warrant as Watchmaker to the King. This is a right that he is asserting now. It is a favour obtained by Messrs. Leroy and Lépine, who are not employed by the Royal Furniture Depository at all. In contrast, Sieur Rieussec is indeed one of [His Majesty’s] watchmakers.”
He had no choice but to wait, especially since the warrant list for 1817 was already closed. The wait was a short one. In 1818, he was granted a warrant as Watchmaker to the Royal Furniture Depository.
The “Chronograph”
The decade of the 1820s was one of the most prosperous in Nicolas Mathieu Rieussec's life. It certainly did get off to an auspicious start. On 1 September 1821 Rieussec attended the Champ-de-Mars in Paris - not as a race spectator come to watch the Arrondissement de la Seine race, but as a watchmaker testing a “chronometer intended to consistently measure the time horses take to travel the prescribed race distances - not only the winning horse, but also all those that cross the line after it.“Seine département prefecture, Horse races, excerpt from the minutes of the meeting on September 23, 1821, INPI, 1BA1625 Rieussec's presence at the Arrondissement de la Seine race was not by chance. His elder brother, Nicolas Joseph, was an important person in French equestrian circles, which at the time were growing rapidly. Sixteen years earlier, on 31 August 1805, an imperial decree had established horse racing. It was in this context that, before 1805, Nicolas Joseph had founded the Buc stud farm, prior to purchasing that of Viroflay a few years later in 1812. He is also considered the promoter of the thoroughbred in France. Horse racing was the fashion, and young watchmaker Nicolas Mathieu quickly saw it as an opportunity to use his skill. Running the horses and determining the winner was one thing. Being able to measure the time for each of the racers was quite another. At this time, early in the 19th century, the need was felt for an instrument that could accomplish this.
On 1 September 1820 many prominent figures had come to the Champ-de-Mars. A practised eye would have recognized Joseph Jérôme, Comte Siméon, Minister, Junior Minister in the Ministry of the Interior; and Gaspard de Chabrol, Prefect of the Seine [département].
Chabrol's support was doubtless unnecessary, since the Minister had expressed his “kindness” to Rieussec the same day, giving him reason to “hope for a patent on the basis of public utility.” Both the Race Jury's report and Prefect Chabrol's letter referred to Rieussec's invention as a “chronometer” or a “timer.” There was as yet no mention of a “chronograph.” The tests were judged to be satisfactory for the time being, as witnessed by the Race Jury's report. Rieussec's invention met a real need. Better yet, it was a comfortable and reliable way to measure the times. Henceforth, there was “no fear of any errors.” It seemed destined for a promising future!
A “Chronograph with Seconds Indicator” In the minutes of its meeting held on 15 October 1821, the French Academy of Sciences reports on Rieussec's invention, which he had presented to them two weeks earlier and which was examined by two of its members, Breguet and Prony. As Rieussec later wrote to Comte Siméon, it was this prestigious company that was the first to call his invention the “Chronograph with Seconds Indicator.” The expression caught on to such a point that it replaced “chronometer” and “timer.” Then and for all time to come, the term became “Rieussec’s chronograph.” Having the Academy's minutes is no small advantage. They provide a description of the chronograph and its operation that is among the most comprehensive in existence:
”The volume and shape of this instrument are about those of a large pocket chronometer. The dial is movable and turns about an axis that is perpendicular to its plane and passes through its centre. When the Chronograph is operating, this dial makes one revolution per minute, and since its circumference is divided into 60 parts, the angular motion of one division corresponds to one second. A small window next to the hanging ring reveals a number, which is replaced by another number with each revolution of the dial and indicates the minutes; the Chronograph can run about three-quarters of an hour without stopping. To use this instrument, when it is mounted and in a resting state, one first sets the divisions marking the time to the starting points by turning a knurled knob with one’s hand. Through the intermediary of a gear train, the knob causes the minute and second dials to move. Having done this, when the moment to start timing arrives, one presses a small button next to the knob to set the machine in motion. The observer can give full attention to the phenomena whose successive time intervals he wishes to measure, and as soon as one of the divisions of these intervals is reached, he presses a second button next to the one we have just mentioned. At the moment when it is pressed a small pen, or metal point, passing through the open tip of a cone filled with black oil ink and placed opposite the moving dial’s fixed zero point, marks a point on the circumference that is divided into seconds. This point then indicates the second and fraction of a second corresponding to the beginning or end of the period of time being measured. Operation of the pen trigger mechanism neither stops nor slows the moving dial’s motion, so the button can be pressed several times while this motion lasts, making a number of black points on the scale divided into 60 parts; each point indicates, by its position, the moment when it was marked.