In a passionate debate the historian Joseph Flores proved that the automatic watch wound by a rotor was not invented by Abraham Louis Perrelet but by the watchmaker Hubert Sarton from Liège a town which is today part of Belgium.

Joseph Flores has been holding steadfast for the past fifteen years or so that the mechanism winding most of today's automatic watches has been conceptualized by Hubert Sarton some years prior to Perrelet's launching such a mechanism.

Mr. Flores proved with his speech substantiated by documents from the French Académie des Sciences' archives that Sarton was the first describing in detail how a watch movement could be wound by using the gravitational forces of a rotor. Mr. Flores took the audience through a precise description of the solution Hubert Sarton had proposed. It was fascinating to see how Hubert Sarton had conceptualized the use of pinions wheels and clutches in such an ingenious way that even today's winding mechanism still do look basically the same.

For those of you understanding French there is a special page on the website of the AFAHA Association française des amateurs d'horlogerie ancienne dedicated to the debate of January 17, 2010 held in Geneva. The AFAHA is the French association of antique watch enthousiasts and groups some of the world's foremost watch historians and collectors of antique watches and clocks alike.

The picture below shows the original design deposited by Hubert Sarton which has recently been found in the archives in Paris.

I for my part bow my head to Hubert Sarton.