Having studied first under his father, Léonard-Frédéric, then under William Dubois and Daniel Jeanrichard, both master watchmakers in Neuchâtel, at the age of twenty-three, in 1846, Ulysse Nardin set up his own company in Le Locle. He started out with just one client, Lucien Dubois in Paris, a middle-man who exported Nardin’s watches to Central and South America. Undeterred by these difficult beginnings, Ulysse Nardin established a reputation for quality as a maker of pocket watches with astronomical complications and marine chronometers that kept time with remarkable precision. The quality and renown of these timepieces was further enhanced by the acquisition, in 1860, of a high-precision astronomical regulator made by Jacques-Frédéric Houriet, which Nardin used to rate his pocket chronometers, which were exported including to the United States. A Prize Medal, the highest distinction, in the complication watches and pocket chronometers category at the Great London Exposition of 1862 confirmed the superiority of Nardin’s production.
