L'Impartial - 23 November 2004Françoise Kuenzi
For the first time, towns were able to set the exact time. These developments were pioneered by German-born Matthias Hipp who went on to establish a flourishing business in Neuchâtel.
No, electricity did not appear in horology at the same time as batteries, oscillators and integrated circuits!
The close relationship between watches and electricity dates back to the second half of the 19th Century. Indeed: at that time the industrial applications of electricity, which had been discovered at the start of the century, were multiplying as the telegraph, telephone, tramways and public lighting gradually made an appearance.
At the same time, slightly less well-known but equally indispensable, pioneers were fashioning clocks powered directly or indirectly by electricity. These would form the basis of public time.
In 1820, the Frenchman André-Marie Ampère invented the electromagnet. Or was it the Englishman William Sturgeon? The paternity of this invention is not fully established … Still, the foundations of electromagnetism were laid. Its initial properties had in fact been discovered by a Danish scientist, Hans Oersted, who had found that an electrical current, when passed through a conducting wire, deflects a magnetised needle placed nearby. Or, conversely, a magnet can deflect a conducting wire through which a current is passed. The magnetic effects of an electrical current are in fact indispensable in the use of electricity for measuring time.
One clock controlling others
In 1840, the Scottish clockmaker Alexander Bain made the first electric clock. A battery supplies the energy to an electromagnet which drives a pendulum. He also conceived of a central clock that could send electrical signals to synchronise other watches, an idea which would be implemented several years later. Because therein lies the significance of the electrical clock: not to use electricity as an energy supply, but to allow a central clock to control several others.
Yet it is clearly Neuchâtel-adopted Matthias Hipp (1815 - 1893) who, in Switzerland, remains one of the precursors of electric clocks. One of the biggest collectors of electric clocks, Zurich-born engineer Jaime Wyss lights up when talking about the career of this German clockmaker who spread the name of Neuchâtel throughout the world thanks to his Telegraph and Electrical Apparatus Factory. “I've managed to strike up a real dialogue with Matthias Hipp”, Jaime Wyss proclaims. “Indeed, when I contemplate the entire collection I've managed to build up over more than 30 years, I ask him questions and, believe it or not, I find the answers.”
Precursor, did we say? Born in Wurtemberg, Matthias Hipp started his career as a clockmaker's apprentice. He then left to master his trade in Switzerland, settling first at St. Gallen. “It is claimed that here, in 1834, even before his 20th birthday, he invented his famous” Hipp toggle “during a night of insomnia, which is smarter than counting sheep”, recounts another collector of electric clocks, Vaud-based Michel Viredaz, in the magazine “Chronométrophilia”.
To one thousandth of a second
Matthias Hipp arrived in Saint Aubin (NE) one year later, where he trained for several years before returning to Germany. He established himself as a clockmaker, set up his own business, and exhibited his Hipp toggle clock in Berlin in 1843. “He also invented a motor and built the chronoscope, followed by a registering chronograph for measuring very short periods of time”, continues Michel Viredaz. Hipp thus succeeded, ahead of everyone, in measuring time to one thousandth of a second!
“Hipp was also a good salesman”, Jaime Wyss confides. “He was nothing like the archetypal dotty inventor who sits in his corner creating. He immediately had the idea of designing products for sale. He sold a very large number of his chronoscopes, which made him a rich man.” And was presented to the Confederation: in 1852, the Federal Council appointed him Director of the National Telegraph Workshop and Technical Manager of the Telegraph Administration. Yet he was still German. “But he earned more than a federal councillor”, adds Jaime Wyss. Unfortunately, his appointment aroused jealousy: he made a profit, “a major crime for a high-ranking federal official”, notes Michel Viredaz.
And so the inventor finally made his way to Neuchâtel where in 1860 he founded a telegraph and electrical apparatus factory on premises in avenue de la Gare, later to become the Caves du Palais, nowadays in a state of advanced decay. His story is well-known to the people of Neuchâtel: Favarger took over from him in 1889 (spoken of as the Favag factory, which would be relocated to Monruz in the east of the town) followed by Hasler, and then Ascom. The end of an industry…
“Accurate timekeeping”
This marketing strength bore fruit. Hipp installed hundreds of systems throughout Swiss towns and elsewhere in the world, even as far away as America. He was aware that a new era was dawning thanks to the development of electricity. Thus, in a pamphlet published in 1876 in éditions Attinger, under the title “Electric clocks”, he reported his findings as follows: “Among the diverse applications of electricity, the most interesting and most important is that of measuring time. Alongside more delicate scientific instruments which, like chronographs and chronoscopes, are used to determine the exact moment at which such and such an observation takes place, and to measure small intervals of time, and which are employed above all in observatories and apparatus rooms, the aim of electric clocks is to keep time accurately in large towns, train stations, post offices, administrative buildings, etc.
Whereas 50 years ago it was sufficient to tell the time to within one quarter of an hour, it is necessary in our age of railways and telegraphs to tell it to within a minute. Now we know that this result cannot be achieved to any lasting extent by the best tower clocks, nor by so-called regulators. Only by means of electricity is it possible for an entire system of public clocks to share in the regularity of an astronomical pendulum, itself subject to scientific control; electricity alone ensures sufficiently safe and accurate timekeeping to fully satisfy the demands of a large population.
After various and repeated experiments over a number of years, we have managed to secure the following two qualities for our clocks:
1. They work uninterruptedly for several years.
2. All the dials of a system indicate the same time, with the same accuracy as the regulator; if it is reset each day, it is accurate to within one second.”
Electricity would continue to influence the research of clockmakers until recent times. With quartz marking a turning point which would make miniaturisation possible. The first quartz clocks had already surfaced around 1930 followed by atomic clocks around 1955. The shift from electric to electronic would be made in the 60s and 70s with the quartz watch revolution. A shift that ultimately traced its roots to the inventions made one century earlier…
