Pioneers

3min read

It is undeniable that the development of electric and electronic watches required a certain openness to leave well established horological pathways behind and to engage onto unknown technological territory. A part of the financial commitment by watch manufacturers, also personal motivation to contribute to a potential but unsure revolution in timekeeping was necessary to drive research and development forward.

However, even if many Swiss engineers working on the development of early battery driven watches were well trained in electrical engineering, mostly having studied at the ETH Zurich or the EPFL in Lausanne, their early career plans did not involve the participation to a nation wide technological revolution involving watches.

Their goal was mainly to be able to work in the raising American communication (radio, television, phone) industry, and after having taken advantage of the excellent Swiss academic training, to move to the USA to gain experience and settle in one of the many industrial branches involving semiconductor or communication research and application (1).

The American Dream

In the 1950s the Americans were recruiting expert engineers from abroad to strengthen their electronic expertise for incorporating in military and space research and application. The facilities working on electronic developments were initially working on aforementioned civil applications, allowing for a raising number of firms being in need of motivated and highly trained electrical engineers. These developments were under close scrutiny of the American military, especially the Department of Defence, generating enormous financial backing from the American government, which meant secure and well paid jobs (1).

Already in the 1950s the Swiss engineering schools in Zurich and Lausanne had an excellent reputation, so many jung Swiss engineers were eager to integrate the growing American electronics industry and the Americans welcomed them with open arms, adding very favourable assets such as free health care, free children care and other advantages to the generous financial remunerations (1).

The Electric Watch Nightmare

In 1960, upon the release and the immediate success of the ‘Accutron‘ watch by Bulova, the Swiss watchmaking industry began to realise, that battery driven wrist watches could jeopardise their global market lead. Consequently, to be able to counter this threat, well trained electrical engineers were needed to develop miniaturised electric and electronic devices, which could be used in wrist watches. The difficulty the Swiss watch industry encountered, was to motivate the experienced Swiss engineers established in the USA to go back to Switzerland and accept jobs, which were not secure and less well paid than in the USA (1).

Upon the decision of the creation of the CEH (Centre Electronique Horloger) in Neuchâtel, to centralise and thus render more efficient the research into devices which could concur with the ‘Accutron’, it had to be decided to point a executive director of this new technological facility concentrating in electronic, horological research. The engineer who would get the first executive director of the CEH was Roger Wellinger (1).

The very first task attributed to Wellinger by the FH (Fédération Horlogère) and Ebauches SA, the initiators of the CEH, was to contact and convince Swiss engineers in strategic positions within the American electronics industry, to leave their established and comfortable life behind and get back to Switzerland to put their newly acquired expertise in service of the Swiss watch industry. (1, 2)

The engineers presented in following sub-sections are listed alphabetically by last name. More engineers are gradually added whenever enough, reliable info about them is obtained.

Every effort is made to also include the biographies of non-Swiss engineers, who greatly contributed to the development of electric and electronic watches.

Ref.:

  1. Personal communication with a former Executive Vice-President of Ebauches SA, in charge of Research & Engineering.
  2. Roger Wellinger Archive