Pierre Jaquet-Droz was born in Geneva, Switzerland in the late 18th century. His years in Geneva was spent designing and building automata or animated dolls, which helped him sell Swiss antique clocks and watches, and even mechanical birds. He also lived in Paris and London where he proved his skills as one of the celebrated antique clock makers of the time.
Jaquet-Droz has contributed much to the advancement of horology as well as to the associated industries. The mechanical singing birds are one of his many innovations. Jacob Frisard was the one who invented the whistle with sliding position, which is highly important in the creation of Jaquet-Droz mechanical singing birds. It was Jaquet-Droz who first made the singing bird pieces, which have flourished over the next centuries.
Since Jaquet-Droz can easily recognize new ideas, he also made numerous other innovations like self-winding swatches. While there were already Swiss horologists who made this kind of innovation, Jaquet-Droz however was the first to construct self-winding clock watches wound through double gold weights that differ in expansion. He also made two long case antique clocks, the École d'horlogerie and the La Chaux-de-Fonds. Some of his fine clocks are displayed in Kunst und Gewerbe Museum, Vienna. His Le Berger automaton and a musical clock can be found in Madrid Pal. A number of his famous automatons were already bought by Ferdinand VI of Spain.
Jaquet-Droz also comes up with an idea of constructing a clock that is capable of following surprising movements. Three characters were present, a negro, a shepherd, and a dog. The shepherd played six tunes on his flute when the clock struck, while the dog approached the negro and fawned upon him.
Occasionally, Jaquet-Droz makes use of an unusual oval form for his watches. This was also adopted by William Anthony, a watchmaker who used the style as his signature forms. Being the innovative clockmaker and watchmaker that he was, Jaquet Droz also made the first double-train independent seconds watches featuring a flirt on the escape wheel pi-nion, which was invented by Jean-Moïse Pouzait.
The self-winding technique of Jaquet-Droz was also applied in his singing bird watch, which later on used for his other types of watches that needs winding the repeating trains equipped in them. He was also the only one who produced self-winding watches that make use of two gold oscillating weights. Both the going and striking trains were struck by this self-winding technique. He also applied the Neuchâtel clock-type striking cadrature to his watches.
Jaquet-Droz also made use of the bridge caliber which features a free-standing barrel. This caliber was originally invented by Lépine in 1770, which is whay it is called as "Lépine caliber". But it was Jaquet-Droz who first decorated its bridges with elegant and delicate engravings. This move made by Jaquet-Droz eventually evolved into Chinese tastes and later on come up with the typical "Chinese caliber" watches. Jaquet-Droz also employed the pump-winding system of Lépine in some of his watches. And all his innovative ideas made him become a celebrated clock-maker and mechanician of all times.