Berthoud, Ferdinand

Ferdinand Berthoud, (born March 19, 1727, Plancemont, Switz.—died June 20, 1807, Groslay, France), horologist and author of extensive treatises on timekeeping.

Berthoud was apprenticed to his brother, a clockmaker at Plancemont, and subsequently studied in Paris. His indefatigable inventiveness and many publications soon made him influential in horological circles, and he became involved in the attempt to solve the problem of determining longitude at sea. Berthoud’s achievement was his creation of a number of reasonably practical marine clocks, partly based on instruments previously constructed in expensive and delicate prototypes by Pierre Leroy of France and John Harrison of England, at a time when very few marine timekeepers were available at all.

He was succeeded in his work by his much more-talented nephew Pierre-Louis Berthoud (1754–1813), a celebrated chronometer maker in his own right.