If we want to safeguard this knowledge, the most effective course of action would be to protect it by creating a kind of encyclopedia of watchmaking knowledge and know-how, in the same spirit and tradition as Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie (1751 - 1772), but with today's tools to make it interactive and didactic.
Technical works require the creation of drawings and plans, but do not allow any vision other than 2D, which limits the understanding of a mechanism that cannot be manipulated. On the other hand, modern 3D and virtual reality techniques, which are widely used in industry, enable us to approach our work from a different angle, one that does not yet exist in watchmaking.
The idea for
CHRONOSPEDIA came from François Simon-Fustier[1], the Watchmaker of the Croix-Rousse, Master of Art in Watchmaking by decision of the Minister of Culture on October 3, 2019. In parallel with his daily practice of restoring 17th and 18th century mechanisms, he has developed significant experience in the use of 3D in antique watchmaking. This expertise has been validated during numerous collaborations in France and abroad to safeguard the watchmaking heritage: Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, Château de Versailles, Musée d'Horlogerie et de décolletage de Cluses, Musée du Temps de Besançon, Palais National de Mafra in Portugal, etc.
The work already carried out demonstrates that if you create a library of 3D mechanism drawings, it becomes entirely possible to create animations, deconstructions, partial views and even virtual manipulations. The electronic nature of CHRONOSPEDIA opens up the possibility of cross-referencing the computerized database of 3D mechanism models with those of museums, which list the most interesting historical clocks, and those of libraries, which include bibliographic references to the most relevant works and documents.
The design of such a multifaceted database will be carried out in conjunction with French institutions specializing in the field, such as INIST (Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique, CNRS).
Once CHRONOSPEDIA has been created, it will be preserved by the Direction Générale déléguée Bibliothèques et appui à la science ouverte of the Université Grenoble Alpes, which is responsible for the national mission of preserving material and digital documents relating to physics and its applications as part of the Collection d'excellence en Physique projects.
Development of 3D and VR tools
Many of the IT aspects of the project (production of 3D models, their visualization, interfacing and processing of the various databases, their "eternal" storage, etc.) will be handled through collaboration with scientific structures such as the GSCOP Vision_R Platform (GINP-UGA-CNRS - "Sciences pour la conception, l'optimisation et la production" Laboratory) and the Nantes Digital Science Laboratory (UMR of the University of Nantes, Centrale Nantes, IMT Atlantique/Nantes Campus, CNRS and Inria).
The software used for modeling is SolidWorks from Dassault Systems, which in April 2022 selected the CHRONOISPEDIA project as one of 8 innovative European projects to benefit free of charge from the new version of the modeling tools
(3DExperience), as well as human resources and communication support from Dassault Systems.
To make the project even more effective and operational, we will be supplementing the safeguarding of knowledge with certified teaching modules. Each mechanism detailed in one of the CHRONOSPEDIA chapters will be the subject of a Certificat Technique de Métier (CTM) drawn up by CMA France and industry bodies. The training courses will be run in collaboration with the Centre International des Technologies Avancées (ICAT) operated by Grenoble Alpes University in La Mure. ICAT's vocation is precisely to create professional training courses on various time-related subjects.
[1] Discover the work of François Simon-Fustier
