Career
Born at Thonne-la-Long in Lorraine, Lepaute arrived in Paris as a young manitoba Before he was received maître by the clockmakers" guild in 1759, he had made such a reputation with several public clocks, notably at the palais du Luxembourg, the château de Bellevue and the château des Ternes that he was given lodgings in the Luxembourg. His clock at the École Militaire, Paris, (illustration, left) still runs.
Lepaute was an innovator, to whom numerous improvements are due, especially his pin-wheel escapement.
He constructed refinements to the clockwork in which the gears are all in the horizontal plane, making possible the revolving dials of clocks in urns (illustration, right) or in globes characteristic of the classicizing Louis XVI style. Three editions of his Traité d"Horlogerie were published in Paris, in 1755, 1760 and 1767.
A small volume, Description de plusieurs ouvrages d"horlogerie ("A Description of several works of clockmaking") appeared in 1764. A nephew Pierre-Basile Lepaute (1750 - 1843) carried the firm well into the 19th century.