What I built
A scrollytelling explainer for the Louis Moinet Compteur de Tierces — a watch built in 1816, lost for nearly two centuries, and certified by Guinness as the earliest known chronograph in 2013. Five animated sections walk through the history of the watch, the anatomy of its six-layer mechanism, the foudroyante hand oscillating at 30 Hz, the double-action shuttle escapement, and the meridian transit the instrument was originally built to time. Dark and light mode supported.
Why I built it
I came to this watch through a chapter in Watches: A Guide by Hodinkee. The description of 30 rotations per second — the highest oscillation frequency anyone had achieved in 1816 — stopped me cold. I wanted to understand the mechanism properly, not just the superlative. mechanical-pencil.com showed me the format: obsessive care, deep history, engineering logic laid out in diagrams. I photographed the watch, handed the images and research to Claude, and asked it to build a working model. This is that model.