Decimal cock by Antoine Thomas

Decimal and sexagesimal clock.
It gives the "classic" time by two times twelve hours and also divides the day into ten hours of one hundred minutes.

Brass cage model, annular enamel dials, silver hands, mercury pendulum.

Clock completed in 1901 by the clockmaker Antoine Thomas-Dubret.
Unique piece inspired by the division of time into 10-hour days during the French Revolution.

Documentation is attached to the clock : negatives of the clock, the watchmaker, notes and handwritten drawings by the designer.

Perfect condition, overhauled by our watchmaker, comes with a two-year guarantee.

The Revolution is thought by its protagonists as the zero point of history and thus marks a break between old time and new time. This representation is found through a system of symbols: promise of a new future, evocation of a new time, of a regenerated people, of a new city… They then proclaim a rupture which opposes the past time, which they put an end to, in the future they propose. From this ideology flow the revolutionary calendar and the introduction of the decimal hour. The 1st Vendémiaire of Year II (September 22, 1793, autumn equinox) marks the end of the Gregorian calendar. The year now begins at midnight, the day of the true autumn equinox for the Paris Observatory. The new calendar is based on two principles: to make the republican year agree with the celestial movements and to measure time by more exact and more symmetrical calculations by applying the decimal system as widely as possible. Secular, he is inspired by a desire for rationality and values the cycle of nature and agricultural work. "Thus, the year will henceforth be composed of twelve equal months of thirty days, with names inspired by the climate and seasons, to which are added 5 days devoted to republican holidays, the" sans-culottides ". After a cycle of four years, that is to say a franciade, a sixth sans-cullotide is added at the end of the year so that the republican calendar matches the celestial movements. Each month is divided according to the decimal system into 3 parts of 10 days. Moreover, anxious to decimalize the complete system of weights and measures, the reformers abolished the division of the day into 24 hours and its sexagesimal subdivisions. They decree that, from midnight to midnight, the day is divided into 10 hours, each divided into 100 decimal minutes, these containing 100 seconds. The decimal hour was born, i.e. 2 hours and 24 minutes, noon now becoming 5 hours.