Among Neuchatel celebrities two names are cited as being the most distinguished men in the making of dials and enamel painting.

One of them, named Charles Racine, early 1800’s, excelled in doing lettering and names. His best work was a small dial of 6 lines on which is inscribed circularly the Lord’s Prayer, its six hundred letters cover only the one thirteenth part of the surface.

The artist could have placed it twenty-four times on the entire space. The same dial includes live other dials, those of the days, months, planets and seconds.

Furthermore, he has included his signature, address and year. All is symmetrically and clearly spaced. While he was working, Racine locked himself in his shop, sometimes for an entire day, taking no food, because, he said the action of digestion caused him to tremble.

The low prices obtainable barely allowed him to earn enough to subsist.
For ordinary dials he received  fcs.1.50 each, for more carefully executed one fcs.2. and he could do scarcely more than three a day.

For microscopic inscriptions he demanded fcs.3. per letter. The other man, Sylvain Robert, was born 1798 and was the only dial painter who could equal Racine.

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