Far from being a patrician like the physicist Jean Jallabert, professor of experimental philosophy at the Académie de Genève, or the naturalist Charles Bonnet, Jean-André Deluc was a bourgeois watchmaker well integrated into the Geneva watchmaking industry. But how did a watchmaker in the mid-18th century became a recognized scholar, as well as a renowned designer and maker of scientific instruments? Deluc was also active in politics, a friend of Rousseau and an active participant in several of Geneva's Enlightenment revolutions. This article explores this question, taking into account both his quest for precision and quest for social equity, two attitudes that showed similarities in Deluc's case.