One of those small objects of vertu for which Isaac Daniel Piguet and later Piguet & Capt. became famous. At the beginning of the 19th century he was the major maker of small musical objects. In fact, since they were new and most of them were made by Piguet, Genevians thought that he was also an inventor of them. They were not the only ones that were mistaken.All sorts of horological objects including fantasy objects were subject to miniaturization, among them musical watches and boxes. Prior to 1770 they required bulky bells, which seriously limited miniaturization. In 1769 Michel Joseph Ransonnet of Nancy presented the French Academy of Sciences with a new invention for mechanical music. Instead of bells he used vibrating blades. He did not make many watches, or at least not many have survived. We know of only one, now in the Patek Philippe Museum,(formerly in the Time Museum). The system was revolutionary, utilizing small blades which were set into vibration by a pinned cylinder, the same type which previously controlled the hammers striking the bells. Interestingly, the invention was then forgotten for thirty years, until, according to the report of the Geneva Society for the Arts, dated February 15, 1796, one Antoine Favre presented a new invention of mechanical music without bells or gongs.Though Favre in all likelihood invented the system independently of Ransonnet, it was the same system. This was to revolutionize Geneva's musical horology as well as the art of making objects of vertu. The miniaturization achieved due to the Ransonnet/Favre invention was tremendously important at the time, especially for the Swiss, who were the major manufacturers of musical movements. It enabled them to make small musical instruments that had never been seen before.