Isaac Thuret

Isaac Thuret was clockmaker to Louis XIV and worked for the Académie royale des sciences in Paris. In January 1675 he made for Christiaan Huygens a watch regulated by a spiral balance spring — the invention that transformed the accuracy of watches — and then claimed a share in the idea, a dispute that ended with Thuret withdrawing his claim.

Thuret's clocks, often in cases of Boulle marquetry, are among the defining works of Louis XIV clockmaking; museum records show some of these cases attributed to André-Charles Boulle's workshop. His son Jacques Thuret succeeded him as a royal clockmaker.

Thuret held lodgings in the Louvre, where the king housed favoured craftsmen. When Huygens asked him in January 1675 to build a watch to his balance-spring design, Thuret completed it within days, and his attempt to share the credit soured relations with Huygens. Huygens's French privilege for the invention was also contested by the Abbé Jean de Hautefeuille, who claimed priority for a straight spring.

Thuret's pendulum clocks of the 1670s–1690s, often in the religieuse form with tortoiseshell and brass Boulle marquetry, show how quickly Paris adopted Huygens's pendulum.