Einfach - Vollkommen // Simple and Perfect: Sachsens Weg in Die Internationale Uhrenwelt. Ferdinand

(English / German)
To mark the occasion of the 200th birthday
of Ferdinand Adolph Lange, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden are
organizing an exhibition that will trace the history of making precision
timepieces in Saxony. The amateur Johann Heinrich Seyffert, the future
master horologist Johann Christian Friedrich Gutkaes and the successful
watch manufacturer Ferdinand Adolph Lange represent this development
from the first precision watches to the high-quality serial production
of pocket watches. Decisive technical innovations can be traced back to
Paris and London, the watchmaking centers of the 18th and early 19th
centuries, while the French-speaking western part of Switzerland
perfected a production system based on a division of labor. Lange
successfully carried out these standards of international watchmaking in
the Saxon town of Glashütte, and his acclaim is also indebted to the
existence of the Mathematisch- Physikalischer Salon. As a site used for
observing astronomy, the Salon was dependent on the accuracy of time
measurement and served as an authoritative interface in which scientific
needs and technical skills were bound together.