We will likely never know the extent of the discussion that took place in Amsterdam between Nicolaus Winkel and Johann Nepomuk Maelzel in the year 1815 or even how that interaction came to be. The inventors certainly spoke of musical chronometers, as both were then traveling the same path. At some point Winkel showed Maelzel his revolutionary chronometer design, soon to be forwarded to the Royal Institute. We can only imagine Maelzel’s reaction to what was before him, Winkel’s elegantly simple solution to centuries’ worth of thought and labor. It was, in its own way, a miraculous conception, even in its present, rather inelegant, state of existence. Whether or not Maelzel reflected upon the inferior quality of his own apparatus, he immediately sensed the commercial potential of Winkel’s double-weighted design and offered to purchase the mechanism outright. Winkel declined.

Undaunted by Winkel’s refusal, Maelzel quickly set out for Paris, where he would procure a new musical timekeeping patent. Fusing his own system of calibration with Winkel’s design approach, the new dual-weighted mechanism would operate according to seconds of time. Crafting a description and an accompanying illustration for a French patent, Maelzel’s initial narrative amounted to no more than a few short paragraphs, explaining the various elements of the spring-driven movement: its main 150-tooth wheel, a 33-tooth escape wheel, its deadbeat escapement and weights and its beats-per-minute calibration as indicated on a scale of Maelzel’s design located behind, not on, the pendulum. The application included one other critical piece of information— the first use of the term métronome, Maelzel having combined the ancient Greek words for measure (metron) and rule or law (nomos).

On 14 September 1815, Maelzel’s metronome was awarded a French patent, no. 696, its first. Less than three months later, on 5 December, came the second, this one from England (fig. 12.1). The extra days and weeks had provided its inventor time to compose a far more detailed depiction of the device. Maelzel’s narrative now spilled out over the course of eight pages and included such details as its diminutive one-foot size and audible beat, with “each vibration being marked by the tick or drop of the escapement, without any hammer or other apparatus for that purpose.”