I just watched this programme on UK BBC4 and it has a little insight into Abraham Louis Breguet and his work before and after the French revolution. If you're not familiar with him apart from the name, he's probably the best regarded French watchmaker of all time. It's orientated around the Marie Antoinette watch which he built over a 40+ year period (and you complain about the wait at your watchmaker!). A gentle way to spend an hour. Very strangely, Ken Kessler makes an appearance who I suppose some of us will remember from hi-fi magazines in the eighties or nineties and he's now working for Revolution magazine. Small write up on the programme from him here. You can see this on BBC iPlayer if you're in UK (or abroad but with the ability to use a VPN identified as being in UK...) but there is a little extract available to all, it seems, here. Cheers, Chris
I've just watched this - fascinating. If you have access to BBC iPlayer this is well worth 60 minutes of your time. An associated BBC documentary about the development of clockwork automata is also worth a look: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0229pbp/mechanical-marvels-clockwork-dreams