Achille Brocot

Achille Brocot worked within a prominent Paris clockmaking family and became known chiefly for the escapement design that bears his name, the Brocot escapement, a visible pin-pallet dead-beat type escapement mounted so that its operation could be seen through an aperture in the dial, a feature that became widely fashionable in nineteenth-century French mantel clocks (pendules) and remains one of the most recognisable identifying features collectors look for on French clocks of this period.

The Brocot escapement was valued less for extreme precision than for its robustness, ease of manufacture, and ease of servicing, since the visible pallets could be adjusted without full disassembly, qualities well suited to the industrialising French clock trade of the mid-nineteenth century, which was producing decorative mantel clocks in large numbers for a growing bourgeois market across Europe.

Brocot also worked on suspension adjustment systems allowing a clock's rate to be regulated from the dial by turning a small key at the twelve position (the 'Brocot suspension'), another feature commonly found on French clocks of the period and often mistakenly assumed to indicate a Brocot-made movement, when in fact many makers licensed or copied the visible escapement and suspension system, so a Brocot-type escapement alone does not prove Brocot manufacture.