Museum of the Time of Besancon
The museum of the Time of Besancon is a museum of Horlogerie of Besancon (Doubs - Franche-Comté) installed in one of the most beautiful palates of the city, the Palais Granvelle.
The Granvelle palate
This palate was built of 1532 with 1540 by taking as a starting point the Italian Renaissance. It bears the name of Granvelle, illustrates family of the area. Indeed, the palate was built for Nicolas Perrenot, lord of Granvelle, which was Minister of Justice and first adviser of the emperor Charles Quint. His/her son Antoine, born in 1517, worked him also with the service of the emperor then of his son, Philippe II of Spain.
Granvelle will gather in their Besancon-native residence of important collections of art and books. These treasures will be inventoried at the 17th century by the Boisot abbot, who will express the will to make them available to all. They will form the first public collection in France and will be at the origin of the library and the museum of the Art schools of Besancon, older museum of France.
The palate will know the records as long as there will remain the property of the family. But following the extinction of the line, in 1637, it undergoes slow degradations. After the French conquest of 1674, the building will be rented and placed at the disposal of the governors. Louis XIV will be accommodated there in 1683, which is worth the title of " to him; Louvre" during its stay. In 1712, the palate becomes property of the city and knows an intense cultural activity. It lodges the Academy of Music, the room of the Comedy and the Academy of Science, Belles-Lettres and Arts.
But the building continues to be degraded. Under the Revolution, it is sold to a private individual and, during the 19th century, is used as rental building. Classified historic building in 1842, it is repurchased in 1864 by the municipality. Eugene Purple-the-Duke, then inspector of the Historic buildings, visits the building in 1870. Immediately, he sees large: the building superb, is designed to shelter works of art, to accommodate the museums of the city… But its project is expensive. Other projects are born (like the transfer of the town hall). Finally, in the years 1950, the museum of History of the City settles there. Modest restoration campaigns towards 1920 and 1960 will not regulate the big problems of roof and structure.
The last decade of the 20th century represents a true turning in the management and the valorization of this prestigious building. Of 1990 with 1997, the restoration of the roofs is carried out. The beautiful roof in glazed tile is reconstituted and its revised frame in oak.
Besancon, of the clock industry to the microtechniques ones: a singular history
At the end of the 18th century, the clock making industry Suisse is struck by unemployment and its clock and watch makers cross a still porous border to settle with Besancon. France encourages and ratifies this movement of immigration by a decree which, in 1793, allows the arrival coming from the Locle (high place of clock making industry Suisse, with two steps of the French border zone of Morteau in Franche-Comté) of Laurent Mégevand, a trader Suisse in Horlogerie which will found with Besancon the French Manufacture of Clock industry in Besancon. Laurent Mégevand wants to compete with industry Suisse and to develop its own ideas as regards development of the clock making industry (of which the Suisse S did not want) thanks to the support of eminent royalist members of the constituent Assembly such as the count Mirabeau, the marquis Nicolas de Condorcet and Pierre Joseph Briot (founder of the Club Jacobin of Besancon). It develops in particular the concept of subcontracting while making manufacture the various components of the watch by various local workshops. It goes bankrupt in 1798 but the clock making industry of Besancon and the Franche-Comté is firmly launched. The Swiss colony (installation with Clock making Besancon and in Franche-Comté of approximately 700 S Swiss S) will put nearly one century at enraciner. It is only towards 1860 that one can regard the Clerc's Office as successful: Besancon-native clock making industry is essential then in the World Fairs of the end of the century; the School of clock industry is founded in 1860. Besancon then becomes truly the capital of the French watch with surroundings 400 workshops of Horlogerie distributed on its territory. Created in 1882, the Observatoire of Besancon has the role first to give the hour right: the hour was posted with the town hall, the clock and watch makers of the area came to take it the morning. Besancon becomes the capital of the French clock industry then. At the end of the 19th century, the university research goes to the meeting of the clock making technicians. The scientific and technical vocation of Besancon as regards measurement of time is based then firmly on its clock making bases. In the years 1970, the development of the clock making centers of the the Far East and the fierce competition of the Suisse put Besancon in difficulty. But it is without counting on know-how as regards precision mechanics which made it possible to develop carrier sectors with a future: the Optical , the electronic , the Acoustic , the Thermal , the pneumatic , the Automatism, the Computer-integrated manufacturing, the biomedical Genius… Today, Besancon is the European pole of the Microtechnique S and the world pole of the time-frequency.
The museum of Time
Birth of the museum
As of the end of the 19th century, according to the Swiss example of the museums S, Besancon plans to create a museum of Horlogerie. Collections are made up; the many attempts to create an autonomous museographic structure come up against the difficulties encountered by clock making industry itself. But the idea of a museum which pays homage to the Besancon-native collective memory, memory related to the measurement of time, appears in a recurring way. In the years 1980, the meeting of a will of the elected officials and a scientific project then makes mature the concept of museum of Time. This project has the aim of putting in synergy two funds of municipal collections:
- on the one hand, collections of clock industry, consisted the museum of the Art schools since approximately 150 years: watches, sundials, sand glasses, collections enriched as from the years 1950 by the unit by the means by measurement by time.
- in addition, funds joined together by the museum of History (tables, engravings) supplemented as from the years 1980 by the creation of a department of industrial history, attracting new collections of clock industry.
Collections
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Occident with the S (first stage)
Seven immense hangings of the 17th century tell the history of a life of exception, that of Charles Quint. At the 16th century, this one was with the head of an immense empire on which, one said, “the sun never lie down”.
Development of the applied sciences: nature and its phenomena become systematic objects of observations. To carry out these experiments, of the instruments are invented to measure the weight, the temperature, the pressure and the duration. Two large scientists work to the measure of time (Galileo and Huygens) and open the race with the precision.
Vision of the world at the 17th century: a model suspended on the ceiling proposes two representations of the universe, by Ptolémée then Galileo. The astronomical sphere of Antide January, one of the showpieces of the museum, represents a model of the world which one wanted created then by clock making God.
Then the windows grow rich by clock making collections. In two centuries, watches and clocks settle in the middle of the life and the thought, involving the evolution of the organization of work and the company.
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the electronic shock of the S (second stage)
Sequence " hundred years ago, in Besançon" A circular window lets guess the presence of a collection high-speed motorboat: the " Show most complicated of the monde". Leroy 01 is a masterpiece, a " encyclopédie" single of the mechanical knowledge. The collections deployed along the walls evoke the recourse to electricity to improve the performances of a mechanical clock industry keen in the race with the precision. The role of Besancon - then capital of French clock making industry - and of its astronomical Observatory are present in this episode thanks to measuring instruments and of diffusion of the hour. The visitor hears the sound as of these old instruments under operation.
Sequence " one does not manufacture any more the hour, one manufactures the temps" In the middle of, a radical change intervenes: the mechanical clock is détrônée by the irruption of electronics and quartz. This strong rupture is moderated by the use, in the middle of the new devices, of an already well-known phenomenon: the frequency. With the liking of the plays, the visitor discovers all kinds of frequency: he finds that of the pendulum, approached on the first floor; he discovers those of the heart, quartz and the atom. Two tables look further into the matter, the selected topics: the piezoelectricity of quartz and the placement of the atomic clocks. In bottom of scene, windows present the first quartz clocks crystal controlled and atomic. The second volume of windows supplements this device, by a setting in landscape scene of the quartz and the one hour posting ultra precise.
Sequence " the infinitely great and the infinitely small: microtechniques" The measurement of time was always most precise of all measurements. This is why it was used to measure space (latitude, longitude) but also the weight, speed, the temperature, the pressure… Today, the microtechniques ones, heiresses of the clock industry, continue this adventure. With its birth in XVIe century, the watch was the first object microtechnic. Today, would the resonator with quartz have replaced it in the middle of our technical world? With always a key word, miniaturization, to continue the exploration of the world.
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Nanomonde : microphone and nanotechnology (second stage)
Laboratories and companies explore already what it is agreed to call the nanomonde, with the borders between microphone and nanotechnologies. Thanks to the museum, they have to the visitors the results of their work: mini-drones, microphone-grips, filters wave, capsules, implants, microlaboratoires, biomedical probes… Gallery of objects and tables teaching offer the essential explanations without which the access to the nanomonde would be reducing. This last does not have anything magic: it is indeed the implementation of an immense technical intelligence, that the visitor has to discover. The man, in the middle of this world, continues the discovery of the universe in which he lives. A concerning device artistic creation invites the visitor with the reflection on the stakes and the prospects thus opened. Photographs installed in bottom of windows, increasing some of the exposed objects inordinately, reinforce the invitation.
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the pendulum of Foucault (turn of the palate)
The museum chose to suspend a Pendule of Foucault 13,11 meters height to the frame of the dome. On the ground, the turntable with diameter of 4,50 meters was put in scene by the sculptor Catherine Lévêque and was carried out by Jean-Marc Dumanchin. The scientific and technical design - D' an extreme precision - pendulum and elements of the table was carried out by Pierre Magnien and Jean-Jacques Boyer (ENSSM).
The showrooms consist of a remarkable architectural mixture old, modern and wood, futuristic design dark, hurdy-gurdies stones and beam, steels patinated or with a grid and thick walls of glass or plexiglass, steel wire ropes and lightings and equipment multi-media very last thing.
To date, only approximately one quarter of the complete project museographic is accessible to the public, the other parts having to be gradually open during the next years…
The collections of Horlogerie of the museum of Time belong to most beautiful of Europe in company of those presented by the museums of the clock industry of La Chaux-de-Fonds (in frontier Suisse) and of Morteau (Franche-Comté).
Internal bonds
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Article on the concept of astronomical time
- Clock Besancon
External bonds
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the museum on the site of the museums of France in Franche-Comté
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