During the last half of the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment burned with its brightest fl ames: Buffon wrote his ?Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux? and Mozart composed his ?Cosi fan tutte? for Marie Antoinette?s brother, Emperor Joseph II. Horace de Saussure reached the summit of the Mont Blanc and took weather observations, and Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. The Montgolfi er brothers took their air balloon for a test fl ight at Versailles, ?manning? it with a duck, a rooster, and a sheep, who all returned safely, thus proving that living creatures could survive at such vertiginous altitudes. Mirroring this effervescence of the spirit and the senses, Geneva?s community of artisans perfected a novel form of enter tainment: the musical automaton watch. These conversation pieces took many forms, each more inventive than another, and were lavishly embellished with singing birds, industrious cupids, and carefree musicians and dancers, to cite just a few of the cast of varied characters. This development seems, in retrospect, almost inevitable. On the one hand, the public ? and particularly the Oriental market ? was eager for novelty, and on the other, the superb craftsmen of Geneva?s celebrated Fabrique (meaning ?Manufacture?) were ready to satisfy them. Indeed, the well-oiled, perfectly functioning machine for creating exceptional timepieces in the city of Calvin was itself a masterpiece. There, concentrated mainly in the Saint-Gervais section, was an army of goldsmiths, engravers, enamelers, jewelers - in short, all professions concerned with clock and watchmaking. Mechanical pieces as such were not new. Since the 17th century, the Chinese emperors had been entertained by the mechanical clocks presented to them by Jesuit mis sio naries, who hoped to promote Christian faith by instilling awe of Occidental technical prowess - propagatio fi dei per scientias. Around the 1760?s, entrepreneurs such as James Cox made the practice more lucra tive by selling elaborate animated and musical clocks to the emperor Quianlong. Many of Cox?s richly decorated animated clocks were made in conjunction with the famous Jaquet Droz and their workshop. Pierre Jaquet Droz (1721-1790) and his son Henry-Louis (1752-1791) had originally come from La Chaux-de-Fonds. Along with their associate and successor Jean-Frédéric Leschot (1746-1824), they opened a branch of their fi rm in London in 1783, and another in Geneva, where they settled the following year. What was new, however, was the miniaturisation of these pieces, as well as a much wider commercialisation. No longer destined to grace only the Emperor?s chambers, animated pieces became smaller, able to fi t into a pocket or to be placed upon a dressing table. Among the specialities of the Jaquet Droz fi rm were mecha nical singing birds, in the form of snuffboxes, fl asks, and other decora tive pieces, always made in pairs when intended for the Chinese market. Prior to approximately 1785, the usual musical accom paniment for mechanical birds had been a set of bulky mecha nical organ pipes ? (called a ?serinette? because this mechanical musical instrument was used to teach canaries - ?serins? in French - to sing). Working closely with Leschot and a gifted technician named Jacob Frisard (1753-1810), the Jaquet Droz invented the whistle with sliding piston, which allowed for a much greater miniaturisation. As the century wore on, singing birds, like all animated pieces, became democratised, being created in greater numbers by the Frères Rochat after 1815 and the Bruguier family after 1825. Along with the delicate automata fi gures, generally in varicolored gold, these pieces usually feature mechanical musical movements, also a Genevan speciality. The idea of miniaturizing musical movements, which until then had taken the form of carillons, is attributed to Antoine Favre-Salomon (1734-1820), who, it was noted in 1796, ?found a means of making carillons without bells or hammers?. These small musical movements, with tuned steel blades which vibrated, producing musical notes, were quickly adopted by the watchmaking community, being incorporated into numerous decorative objects. Soon they had been miniaturised suffi ciently to fi t into a ring! One of the first to employ them was Isaac Daniel Piguet (1775-1841). Piguet had come to Geneva from the Vallée de Joux around 1800, and had worked for Jean-Frédéric Leschot before becoming associated, in 1802, with his brother-in-law Henry Capt (Piguet had married Capt?s siste r Jeanne Françoise). Around this time, as was written on the occasion of the 1828 Exhibition, he made a ?small musical movement made up of 5 notes executed by steel springs?, to replace the watch in a ring. An early cali bre of Piguet & Capt featured several groups of musical teeth fi xed both to the upper and lower plates, in order to best use the available space. The Piguet & Capt Company was dissolved in 1811. Isaac Daniel Piguet then became associated with Philippe Samuel Meylan (1772-1845). Meylan came from the village of Le Brassus in the Vallée de Joux, arriving in Geneva around 1792, and working (as Henri Capt had also done) for Godemar frères. The Piguet & Meylan fi rm would last until 1828. Piguet & Meylan, among the most important makers of musical automata watches, often used a calibre in which the teeth are set in a fan shape around a revolving pinned disk. This arrangement, which requires little space, was extremely useful in the creation of animated musical pieces. One of the fi rm?s most characteristic creations is a repeating watch with an automaton dog and swan, the dog?s bark being produced by a special bellows. These idyllic scenes tempt one to believe, as did the Age of Enlightenment, in the perfectibility of mankind. Even Voltaire, wary though he was of beatifi c opti mism, appreciated and cultivated them in his horological garden at Ferney. In 1771, when offering an exceptional piece with repetition on a two-bell carillon ? a forerunner of the musical automaton rings later made by Piguet and Capt - to the Count d?Aranda, he boasted: ?If ever you wish to decorate the fi nger of some illustrious Spanish lady with a ring watch with repeating, seconds, the quarters and half quarters by carillon, and all embellished with diamonds, it can only be made in my village?? Like the philosopher, one cannot help but be charmed by these clockwork universes in which the birds never cease to warble, the fountains never run dry, the dancers never tire, the dogs never lose their bark, the musicians never stop playing their delicate clockwork tunes, and the funambulist sways bravely to and fro, poised above the abyss for all eternity - truly the best of all Pos sible Worlds. ?The Best of All Possible Worlds? by Sharon Kerman, reprinted, with kind permission, from Patek Philippe Magazine, No. 12. The Best of All Possible Worlds: Automaton Watches D