Jean-Antoine Lépine

Jean-Antoine Lépine was a Paris watchmaker who worked for, and eventually became related by marriage into the circle of, André-Charles Caron, watchmaker to Louis XV, and rose to serve as royal watchmaker himself. He is best known for the 'Lépine calibre,' a movement architecture that dispensed with the traditional full plate and fusee-and-chain construction in favour of independent bridges (cocks) for individual wheels and a going barrel, producing a notably thinner watch.

The Lépine calibre proved foundational for the later development of thin pocket watches and, eventually, wristwatches, because separate bridges made assembly and repair more practical while reducing overall movement height. Its influence over French and, eventually, Swiss movement design over the following century was substantial, even though Lépine's own commercial fortunes fluctuated across the political upheaval of the French Revolutionary period.

Lépine's business passed through several hands and continued to use his name into the nineteenth century; as with other historic maisons, later 'Lépine' products should be understood in the context of the firm's changing ownership rather than as the founder's personal work.