Max Hetzel

Nationality: Swiss

Early training: Electrical engineer, ETH Zurich

Watch industry: technical director ‘Accutron’ production; director of the LSRH (Laboratoire Suisse de Recherche Horlogère); project leader Omega ‘Megasonic’ development

Main achievements: Hetzel was not predestined to enter the watch industry. His diploma at the ETH Zurich was about the electromechanical frequency filters for telegraph transmission channels.

Upon entering his first employment at Bulova (Bienne) he was appointed to develop the automatisation of the mechanical calibre manufacture and after the presentation of the first electromechanical caliber by Lip and Elgin in 1952, to perform a meta-analysis of possible systems, which would be able to compete with it. Instead of complying with this demand, he developed a completely new technology for wristwatches which would revolutionise timekeeping.

He invented the first wristwatch caliber without balance, the ‘Accutron‘ while at Bulova. The regulation would be performed by a miniature metal tuning fork. After about 10 prototypes constructed in the Bulova facility in Bienne, he was transferred to the production facility in New York, where he supervised the ‘Accutron’ production until 1963. After refusing the job offer by Roger Wellinger in 1961 to be part of the CEH, he received the visit by Sydney De Coulon, the general director of Ebauches SA in 1963, who offered him triple of his salary at Bulova to return to Switzerland and develop an all-Swiss electronic caliber, better than the ‘Accutron’ system. Hetzel then moved to Switzerland to become the director of the LSRH, closely associated with the CEH in Neuchâtel.

While his work succeeded in the development of what Hetzel called ‘CEH-Swissonic‘, its concept infringed the very complex ‘Accutron’ patent, so the project was abandoned in late 1968 and Hetzel changed to Omega in April 1969, where he continued his research on the CEH-Swissonic system and optimised it to become the Omega ‘Megasonic’ model launched in 1972.

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