University libraries

For over thirty years, watchmaking schools have focused almost exclusively on quartz and mechanical watches.
All aspects of clocks and watches are generally dealt with theoretically. Practical work, when it takes place, is mainly limited to dismantling and reassembly, without the trouble-shooting and correction that are essential for restoration and safeguarding mechanisms. This is all the more true given that, with almost no supplies available for clockmaking, restoration requires the ability to remake parts, a skill that has disappeared from the apprenticeship syllabus.

The building clock, the first time-counting system, at the origin of all other mechanisms and a very important marker of social life, is barely mentioned.
If nothing is done, expertise in clockmaking and building watchmaking will have disappeared by 2030, when the last watchmakers trained "the old-fashioned way" retire.
In addition to the loss of knowledge, a whole part of our heritage will no longer be maintained.
Today, it is possible to pass a CAP in one year and join a company in France or Switzerland for watch assembly work. However, training courses at Brevet level and above include management, design and commercial disciplines, which are far removed from the skills needed to restore antique mechanisms.
In addition to the lack of specific training in clockmaking, virtually no technical books on the subject have been published for 200 years, and those that do exist are not sufficiently explicit or accessible to younger generations.
The problem is even more acute for the core of the watchmaker's trade: fault diagnosis, without which no intervention would be relevant, but which is not covered in the current curriculum.

It is therefore urgent to create an archive that integrates both watchmaking knowledge and know-how.