Vintage Watch Straps

The Earliest Wristwatches

Although many firms claim to have invented the wristwatch, there is a serious question as to whether such a simple development really required to actually be "invented" as such - surely it is obvious? There is certainly no patent on the invention of the wristwatch, and I very much doubt that would could have been obtained given the obvious nature of the idea. Something that would be intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer cannot he patented.

In their monumental "Technique and History of the Swiss Watch" (ISBN 0 600 03633 2, and weighing in at nearly 2.5kg, a truly monumental book!) the authors, Eugène Jaquet and Alfred Chapuis, relate the following story on the origin of the wristwatch: "Much has been written about this subject, and we ourselves have heard the following story from an old engraver: A good woman, seated on a bench in a public park, was suckling her child. In order to observe the time, she had attached her watch around her arm. A passer-by was struck by this naive ingenuity. On his return home, he soldered two lugs on to a lady's watch, and added a strap."

Are Jaquet and Chapuis really, seriously, expecting us to believe that the combined brains of the watch industry, which had produced such mechanical complications as the chronograph, minute repeater, perpetual calendar, and the tourbillon, were unable to come up with the idea of soldering two bits of wire on to a watch case so that a strap could be attached? I don't think so!

Jaquet and Chapuis were two very eminent horologians. Professor Eugène Jaquet was Principal of the Geneva School of Horology, and Alfred Chapuis was Dr. honoris causa of the of the University of Neuchâtel. The rest of Technique and History of the Swiss Watch is written in a scholarly and serious way, so the way this episode is written indicates that it was included as a humorous remark. Just about every watch manufacturer claims to have been the first to make a wrist watch, and I think this was Jaquet and Chapuis poking fun at these claims. Notice how they say "... and we ourselves have heard the following story ..." They are not saying they endorse the story, they are just pointing out that strapping a watch to ones wrist is merely "naive ingenuity" not a technical breakthough which deserves geat merit.

So if wrist watches were an obvious invention, which women had been wearing for centuries, why did it take so long for men to catch on to the idea of the wrist watch? There are two aspects to this question: technical and fashion. Could a watch small enough to be worn on the wrist keep accurate time? And would a "real" man wear something that looked like a bracelet? Rather than a massive technical breakthough where some genius had a flash of inspiration, the real story of the mans wristwatch is of how it overcame these technical and social fashion barriers.

1868 Patek-Philippe Bracelet Watch

The very first wristwatches we know about were small watches on bracelets (bracelet-watches or montres-bracelets) intended for ladies. An account book of Jaquet-Droz and Leschot of Geneva mentions, in 1790, "a watch to be fixed to a bracelet,". When Eugène de Beauharnais married Princess Auguste-Amélie of Leuchtenbergin 1809, the Empress josephine presented her daughter-in-law with two bracelets, one containing a watch, the other a calendar. These were made in 1806 by the Parisian jeweller Nitot.

In 1810 the famous French watch maker Bréguet was comissioned by the Queen of Naples to make a wristwatch, which was completed in 1812. Patek Phillipe made the key-winding lady's bracelet watch shown on the left in 1868 for the Countess Koscowicz of Hungary. By the end of the nineteenth century, many if not most watch makers were producing bracelet watches, often with elaborate enamelling and jewelling of saphires, rubies, or diamonds.

But these earliest wrist watches were not serious watches; they were worn by ladies as novelties, or elaborate jewellery. Wrist watches were regarded as too small to be properly engineered in order to keep time accurately; and too prone to damage by shock, or contamination with dust and moisture due to their exposed location; and, perhaps most damningly so far as men were concerned, effeminate: because wrist watches were something worn by ladies.

A gentleman who wanted to keep track of time wore a pocket watch, usually tucked into a pocket of a waistcoat, a garment introduced by King Charles II in the 17th century, on the end of a long "Albert chain," a chain introduced by Prince Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria, which had a clip at one end to attach to the bow of the pocket watch and a bar at the other to fasten it to a button hole to prevent the watch being dropped. This was a long standing fashion of how a true gentleman dressed to present himself to the world.

Apart from fashion, there was another challenge to makers of wristwatches. Pocket watches had developed from miniaturised spring driven clocks in the 15th or 16th century, and had been gradually made smaller and slimmer. But there was a general perception that an accurate watch needed to be of a certain size, and that to make it small enough to be worn on the wrist would be to sacrifice accurate timekeeping.

The final challenge that a wristwatch had to deal with was hazards. The environment within a waist coat pocket is relatively benign; warm, dry and relatively protected from shocks. But strapped to the end of an arm, the wrist watch is exposed to all manner of hazards and rough treatment, it is prone to getting knocked, exposed to dust and splashed with water. All of these hazards presented problems to watch movements of the time, which did not live in hermetic cases, and therefore would get gummed up if dust mixed with the oil, rusty if moisture got in, and were prone to shocks breaking the delicate pivots of the balance staff, only a few 10ths of a millimetre in diameter.

The true story of the wrist watch, or at least of the mans wrist watch (because as we know ladies wristwatches had been available for centuries) is of how it overcame these technical and social barriers to become an essential part of every mans wardrobe - just as the finest and most complicated wrist watches still are today, despite the fact that, with every gadget from phones to computers having a clock built in, they are no longer needed to tell the time!

From Pocket Watch to Wrist Watch

The development of the mans wrist watch from the pocket watch was a gradual process, not an overnight event. Although there were many twists and turns along the way, and almost every manufacturer now claims to have been the first to make a man's wrist watch, the true story behind the man's wrist watch is broadly as follows.

It all began in the second half of the nineteenth century with the needs of the military for the precise timing of manoeuvres, combined with the difficulty of using a pocket watch during such manoeuvres. Faced with the difficulty of pulling out a pocket watch every few minutes (not the easiest of acts at the best of times, but made especially difficult if one was wearing a military great coat and crouching in a trench under enemy fire) or using one hand to hold the watch up to your face as the vital last few seconds ticked by, whilst holding the horse's reins with the other, and yet still needing to wield a pistol, officers soon recognised the utility of strapping a watch to the wrist. Thus began the development of the man's wrist watch. At first pocket watches were adapted by being placed in leather cups with wrist straps, and then by having lops of wire called lugs soldered onto the case to take a leather strap.

Manufacturers noted this demand and, recognising that a standard pocket watch was rather too large to be comfortably worn on the wrist, started producing purpose made wrist watches. These were initially based on smaller movements originally designed for ladies watches, placed into purpose designed cases with wire lugs to take a leather strap. Although taken up by aviators, automobilists and the military, these wrist watches did not find favour with the general public. They were regarded as too small to keep accurate time, too vulnerable to damage or dust and water, and simply not the fashionable thing for men to wear.

Developments in accuracy and case design ensued, and by the time of the First World War (WW1) almost every manufacturer had a mans wrist watch in their range, even if they weren't selling many of them. The war changed the perception that wrist watches weren't for men. Many officers recognised the drawbacks of using an officially issued pocket watch and purchased their own wrist watches. Civilians started seeing men home on leave wearing wrist watches, and of course after the war men who were demobilised continued to wear the wrist watch they had worn on active service and this gradually changed the fashion so that the wrist watch became first an acceptable, and later an essential, mans accessory.

1901 Goldsmiths Advert

Some Salient Events and Manufacturers

In the paragraphs that follow I have used some of the salient events of history and the records of some of the most significant manufacturers to illustrate stages in the development of the wrist watch, along with some diverse bits of information that I thought were interesting or relevant when I was writing the item. I hope you find this interesting, and if you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know.

Military Requirements - The Second Boer War

The second Boer War was fought between the British Army and descendants of Dutch settlers called Boers (farmers) between 1899 and 1902 in Southern Africa. It was a long war involving large numbers of troops from many British dominions. The Boers operated as self-organising commando units, they were used to life in the saddle and to hunting with a rifle; they knew the terrain, and were highly motivated. Against such a highly mobile adversary, British officers were forced to develop the technique of using precision timing to coordinate troop movements and synchronize attacks against the Boer's positions.

Strapping a watch to ones wrist so that it could regularly be checked quickly and easily whilst on horseback, rather than having to fumble about with a pocket watch, was essential under precisely timed and fast moving battlefield conditions.

Pictured right is an advertisement for a military pocket watch, "The Companys Service Watch," which appeared in the 1901 Goldsmiths Company Watch and Clock Catalogue. It was described as "The most reliable timekeeper in the World for Gentlemen going on Active Service or for rough wear." The "UNSOLICITED TESTIMONIAL" at the bottom of the advert, dated June 7th 1900, states "Please put enclosed Watch in a plain Silver Case. The metal has, as you can see, rusted considerably, but I am not surprised, as I wore it continually in South Africa on my wrist for 3½ months. It kept most excellent time, and never failed me. Faithfully yours, Capt. North Staffs. Regt." (emphasis added).

The pocket watch would have been mounted in a leather cup sewn onto a leather wrist strap like the one illustrated below, and the writer was obviously on active service during the height of the Anglo-Boer war referred to above. Was it a wrist watch then? A moot point.

When is a Trench Watch a Soldiers Watch or is it a Ladies Wristlet?

A correspondent posed the question: "There are many so called "Trench Watches" listed on auction sites (not just eBay), that are in reality ladies wristlets. Given that the introduction of the first wrist watches (or Wristlets) were for ladies, which men of that perod, considering them something "that real men would not wear", continuing to prefer a pocket watch, how can one tell whether a so called "trench watch" is a mans or a ladies watch?"

My reply was: I think it is a bit like like men's versus ladies shorts, (I mean the garments, not liquor!) the difference is in both the size and the style. Mens watche's, like their shorts, would tend to be larger and more manly looking, ladies smaller and more feminine. My grandfather's watch is larger than my grandmother's at 34mm versus 28mm, but it is also clearly more manly in style, even if they were the same size.

I tend to regard any trench watch smaller than about 30mm diameter, excluding lugs and crown, as a de-facto ladies watch. However, I have had at least one correspondent swear to me that a 28mm watch belonged to their grandfather. It is entirely possible that a man of small stature with a small wrist, as many were in those days due to poor diet - the army found that many men called up were unfit for service dues to this - could not wear a larger watch and so chose a "ladies" size watch. So in this case the exception proves (tests) the rule, which must change as follows: "Men wore large wrist watches" => "Most men wore large wrist watches".

I have also noticed that gold watches, presumably on account of the cost of the gold used to make the case, do seem to be smaller than silver watches. I have not dome a survey to establish whether this is generally true (which would be difficult because so many gold cases have been scrapped over the years) it is just an off-the-cuff observation based on the examples I have seen.

Any wrist watch with what I would call a "fancy" dial - e.g. guilloche with gold numbers, gold dots, jewels etc. also goes into the ladies category. But again, who can say? I see men wearing ear rings and although I wouldn't do it personally, I can't make a rule that says it doesn't happen.

Note that this doesn't apply to watches made in the 1930s and 1940s when there was a trend to smaller watches. I am not an expert on this area so I can't say exactly when and why it happened, but some watches that are clearly mens from the middle 1930s are only 28mm diameter.

So in answer to the question: there is no definitive rule or way of telling whether a watch is a mans or ladies watch. My personal rule is that "I know it when I see it", based on the foregoing. Many things which are clearly ladies watches are described as trench watches, presumably in the majority of cases because the vendor thinks this will lead to a higher price. I think we just have to accept this as a fact: that the term is now being used to describe a type of watch, one with fixed wire lugs, and not necessarily one that was actually used, or likely to be used, in the trenches. As with anything, caveat emptor: do your own research, look closely at what you are buying, and don't trust the salesman's patter to be entirely accurate.

Who Made My Watch?

If you have a Swiss watch from the nineteenth or early twentieth century, you might never find out who made it - branding like we are used to today just didn't exist at the time, particularly on mass produced Swiss watches. To discover why, we need to go a little into the history of watch making.

The Earliest Clocks and Watches

Mechanical clocks appeared in Europe during the 13th century. These were usually installed in towers, and used bells to sound the hours, hence the name "clock" from the Medieval Latin word clocca (bell). Their purpose was to sound the canonical hours, the times during the day at which prayers were said. They were weight driven mechanisms, and as time went past smaller versions started to be made for use in houses. At some stage, dials and hands were added, with a chapter ring marking out the hours.

For some two hundred years, clocks were driven by falling weights. Although flat pieces of steel had been used as springs in locks etc. for many centuries, the invention of the spiral coiled flat spring in the 15th century meant that a spring could be used to drive the clock mechanism instead of weights. Clocks could now be made small enough to stand on a table instead of hanging on a wall, and for the first time could be moved around while they were going. Inevitably these spring driven clocks, usually in the shape of a drum or tambour, were made smaller and smaller as their makers showed off their skills, and eventually became small enough so that they could be carried on the person as ornaments, initially on a neck chain, and then hanging from the belt. These were the first watches.

The first watches used the verge and foliot escapement as found in lantern clocks. There was no balance spring, and the timekeeping depended entirely on the inertia of the foliot as it was accelerated one way and the other by the crown wheel, or escape wheel, under the force of the main spring. In the 17th century the foliot, a bar pivoted at its middle on the verge staff with weights at its ends, was gradually superceded by the balance wheel, which had a higher moment of inertia for a given size. The changing force of the main spring as it ran down, and friction in the train of gear wheels between the main spring and the escape wheel meant that the accuracy of time keeping was poor, and consequently these watches were only fitted with a single hour hand.

The earliest watches were more novelties than accurate instruments, and were sold to princes and very wealthy customers. The first centre of watch making was in Southern Germany, where the numerous principalities meant a good number of princes to support the trade. Each watch was hand made, with elaborate decoration, and encased in precious metals with exotic enamel and jewel decorations. They were made in very small numbers, and guilds sprang up as the established watch makers sought to restrict who could enter the trade, and thus keep supply restricted and prices high.

In the middle of the 17th century, around 1657, a small spiral spring called the balance spring was added to the balance wheel. The balance spring and balance wheel assembly has its own natural frequency of back and forth rotations, making the timekeeping of the watch less sensitive to changes in the force delivered by the main spring. The accuracy of timekeeping was improved so much that it was worth adding another hand to the watch to indicate minutes.

Watch Making in Switzerland

Geneva has a long history of horology. Clocks were known there in the ninth century, probably imported from southern Germany, and were quite common by the eleventh century. Watch making came to Switzerland in the 16th century, in 1587 when it was introduced to Geneva by Charles Cusin of Autun in Burgundy. A hundred years later there were over 100 watchmakers registered in Geneva, who employed more than 300 workmen and manufactured nearly 5,000 watches a year. Watchmaking received a considerable boost when Calvinist reforms banned the wearing jewellery and goldsmiths offered decorative watches as an alternative.

In 1601 the Watchmakers Guild of Geneva of Geneva was established to control the trade in and around Geneva. The guild ensured that the quality of watches made by its members was maintained at the highest levels, but also restricted practices that could have reduced the cost of watches. Mass production was banned, the number of apprentices kept artificially low, and entry to the guild (and thus permission to make watches) strictly controlled. As a result of this, the reputation of Geneva watches for quality was kept very high, as were the prices.

The manufacture of small numbers of very expensive watches by members of the watchmakers guilds was hardly an industry. These watchmakers were located in Geneva and other large cities in Switzerland, Southern Germany and France. Cities with large populations of wealthy aristocrats and merchants who were prepared to pay a high price for an item they could show off to their peers. Then in the later half of the 17th century, the birth of one man, a man who was not prepared to go along with the accepted order of things, changed everything.

Daniel JeanRichard and the Birth of the Swiss Watch Industry

In 1672, Daniel JeanRichard was born in Les Bressels, La Sagne, which is about half way between Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds, in what is now the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. This area is in the Jura mountains, high above the town and lake of Neuchâtel, far removed from the then Swiss watchmaking centre of Geneva. Geneva itself is 373.6 meters (1225.7 ft) above sea level, already high enough. Neuchâtel is higher at 430 m (1,411 ft), but Le Locle is 945 m (3,100 ft) above sea level, much higher still. Due to the altitude and the lack of water, with porous sandstone underground, the land around Le Locle is ill suited to farming.

Some records give JeanRichard's birth year as 1665, but Jaquet and Chapuis refer to documentary evidence from local archives which shows that it was 1672. The ancestors of the family JeanRichard were called Richard, but one of them had been given the christian name Jean and for some reason this was carried forward as the unusual double second name JeanRichard during the following centuries. Little is known of Daniel JeanRichard's background. There are suggestions that he was a blacksmith or a locksmith, and Kathleen Pritchard, in "Swiss Timepiece Makers 1775-1975" says he was "probably" a goldsmith. It is known that there were watches in Le Locle before JeanRichard was born, and also that there were goldsmiths working in the mountains.

But it is Daniel JeanRichard who is credited with bringing watchmaking to the region, beginning a revolution that would turn a rural farming community, struggling against poor soils and long hard winters, into the watch making centre of the world. It is a remarkable story.

The first recorded mention of Daniel JeanRichard is by the banneret Frédéric Samuel Osterwald who, in 1766 published a description of the mountains and valleys of the Principality of Neuchâtel and Valangin. In this book Osterwald says that "a man named Peter, a horse dealer, returning to his homeland in 1679, brought with him a watch made in London, an item absolutely unknown in the mountains." The watch had become broken and the dealer, noting the aptitude of the young Daniel JeanRichard with mechanical things, asked him to repair it. JeanRichard took the watch apart and repaired it, making notes and drawings of the parts in the process. Based on these notes and drawings, JeanRichard proceeded to make a replica of the watch. But first he had to make the tools he needed, taking a year in the process. He learned that in Geneva the watchmakers had machines for dividing wheels equally and cutting the teeth. He went to Geneva, but the guild watchmakers kept the machines secret. Returning home in frustration, he reinvented the machine himself. Once he had made all the tools he needed, it took him a further six months to make his first watch.

Although there is probably quite a lot of truth in this charming story, the story of the horse dealer and the broken watch is probably legend, and similar tales are told in watch making areas of France and Germany.

What is known is that 1691 at the age of 19, Daniel JeanRichard opened a watch workshop near Le Locle, and proceeded to revolutionize the watch industry. He defied the restrictions of the guild system and employed local farmers, who had little work during the long winters, to manufacture individual components for him, which he would assemble into watches. This system of division of labour was called établissage. JeanRichard taught the farmers to specialise in making certain parts, so that with experience they could produce high quality individual parts very cheaply compared to the guild system, where a few craftsmen made all the parts of a watch. He also increasingly mechanized watchmaking, designing and improving tools and machines so that less skilled workers could still produce high quality parts. This system of increasing specialisation and mechanisation produced high quality watches at low prices.

After setting up his workshop in Le Locle, Daniel JeanRichard first taught horology to his five sons, and then other young people curious to learn took up apprenticeships with him and became masters, who in their turn trained new artists. Without the restrictions on the number of apprentices that the Geneva watchmakers had, the number of apprentices and new masters grew rapidly in the mountains. From its introduction to Le Locle by Daniel JeanRichard, watchmaking spread all over the Jura range of Neuchâtel and Berne and the adjoining districts of Soleure and Bâle.

When Osterwald recorded his journal in 1766 he noted that "at least 15,000 silver or gold watches were made each year in Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fond collectively, without counting a very great number of simple and complicated clocks." By 1855 the watchmakers in the Jura mountains were producing nine times as many watches as those of Geneva. The Kelly Directory of 1901 lists 713 Swiss watchmakers. Of this 713, 258 are located in La Chaux-de-Fonds, 37 in Le Locle, 88 in Bienne and 47 in Tramelan, a total of 430 compared to just 75 in Geneva. A clear indication of how the descendants of the farmers in the mountains had overtaken the guildsmen on the shores of Lake Geneva.

At the beginning of the 20th century, more than a half of all watches distributed around the globe were produced in the region of Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fond.

Daniel JeanRichard died in 1741, but he is still hailed as a hero in Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds. In the center of Le Locle, in front of the post office, is a statue of him in a workers apron, examining a watch. There is a Daniel JeanRichard museum in La Sagne, and a street is named after him in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The picture below is the banner from the front page of La Horlogère Suisse, a trade paper published in La Chaux-de-Fonds. At the top, in the centre, is a picture of the local hero, Daniel JeanRichard.

So Who Did Make My Watch?

Unlike the presigious names of the Geneva makers, many of which are still with us today, the name of the individual little establishments who assembled watches in an obscure mountainous part of Switzerland he had never heard of would have meant nothing to the man in the street in England. Many of the watches made at the time were made in very small batches, assembled from components sourced from specialist individual small workshops. The name of the "maker" of such a watch is impossible to ascertain.

However, in the 19th century, some industrialists spotted the advantage of bringing some, or all, of the individual specialists under one roof, or into one factory. These larger enterprises did have recognisable names, and supplied complete ebauches rather than individual components. They were factories like Schild, Stauffer & Son, and Fontainemelon. And other manufactures that we do recognise today, like IWC and Longines, whose machinery could produce more than they could sell, supplied ebauches to other makers. (I need to do some more research in this area, so this section is unfinished. Well, the whole web site is unfinished, and probably never will be finished; but this bit is more unfinished than the rest!)

Sometimes the maker can be interpreted from marks stamped on to the movement and sometimes a maker's mark is revealed when the dial plate is removed. If you have the watch overhauled, make sure the watchmaker looks out for this and any other tell-tale signs, and if possible get him to photograph the movement from the under-dial side. One very experienced watchmaker spotted that one of my watches was an Omega, even though it wasn't marked in any way, he just recognised the movement from the shape of the plates after servicing many over the years.

Until the 1920s, the only form of branding as such was usually the name of the jeweller who retailed the watch, and who would be a known and trusted name in his city or town. The jeweller had his name printed on the dial in the open white space left between the central hand boss and the "12" - but because this was done in indian ink or similar onto the enamel dial after it had been fired, it was not very permanent and has usually worn off or become very faint. Under the direction of Hans Wilsdorf, Rolex was one of the first companies to promote heavily their own brand. This was because at the time, Rolex didn't manufacture their own watches and needed some way to distinguish their products from identical items available from other wholsesalers. In the face of resistance from retailers, it was not until 1921 that Wilsdorf and Davis started putting "Rolex" on a small proportion of their watch dials and taking out adverts to promote their "brand", and only several years later were all Rolex watches were so marked. Other manufacturers followed suit, and gradually the public began to look out for the brand names that could project their image best.

Some Early Makers of Wrist Watches

The list of makers below is not intended to be exhaustive or definitive. It is a collection of makers of early mens wrist watches with interesting tales to tell. It begins with Girard-Perregaux, who claim to have been the first to make significant quantites of wrist watches. Unfortunately they are unable to produce any factual evidence to support this claim, and some doubt its veracity. The next entry is Cartier, and the wrist watch they made in 1904 is well documented, but was a single item made following a very specific request, so that doesn't qualify them as the first mass maker of wrist watches. And then follow a parade of well known industry names, who all claim to have been the first to make wrist watches.

But who was the first factory to start mass producing and selling wrist watches to the general public? The simple answer is that we don't know, and probably never will: because there wasn't just one visionary pioneer who saw the future and single handedly converted the public's taste and fashion from pocket watch to wrist watch. The demand arose first from adventurers, sportsmen and automobilist, and then the big demand came from military requirements during WW1. Manufacturers responded to it by taking watches they already made and adding attachments for straps. It wasn't very difficult to do, and it seems to me that they all climbed onto the bandwagon at about the same same time, in the years between 1900 and 1920.

Similar to German Navy Watch © Girard-Perregaux

Girard-Perregaux

In 1879 the German Emperor Wilhelm I visited the Berlin Trade Fair and saw some experimental wrist watches made by Girard-Perregaux of La Chaux de Fonds in Switzerland. He gave an order for 1,000 of these for the German Imperial Navy, and as many as 2,000 such wristwatches were delivered in 1880, so Girard-Perregaux claim to be the first manufacturers of wristwatches in significant volume.

Unfortunately, not much is known about these wristwatches because the archives of Girard-Perregaux were partially lost some years later, and it is thought that all the watches are lost too. This is a little surprising if there were thousands produced, and hopefully one will turn up one day. But in the absence of such evidence, some have claimed that the story isn't factual.

Omega

Another maker of very early wristwatches was the manufacturer founded as an assembly workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1848 by the 23 year old Louis Brandt. Louis Brandt died in 1897 and his sons Louis-Paul and César moved the firm to Bienne, operating there as Louis Brandt & Fils (Louis Brandt & Sons) until in 1891 the name was changed to Louis Brandt & Frère (Louis Brandt & Brother).

As early as 1892, in partnership with Audemars Piguet, Omega produced the worlds first minute repeater wristwatch, ringing the hours, quarter-hours and minutes on command.

First Omega wristwatch 1900

The 1932 Omega Marine

In 1932, with Rolex still having a firm grip on waterproof watch crowns through the patented screw down Rolex Oyster crown, Omega introduced a waterproof wrist watch based upon Swiss patent CH 146310 granted to Louis Alix of Geneva. This patent was also taken out in France, Britain, the USA and Germany. The design overcame the problem of making the winding stem water proof without infringing Rolex's patents by the simple expedient of sliding the whole watch inside a second outer casing. The watch was called the Omega Marine.

Louis Alix patent CH 146310

The Omega Marine watch movement, dial, and hands were contained in a rectangular section interior case. This interior case had a shoulder at the end with a groove which contained a gasket. The interior case slid into a rectangular section outer case, the end of which contacted the gasket in the shoulder of the interior case, forming a water tight seal. A large spring clip on the back of the outer case held the two parts of the case together. The clip was necessary to provide the initial seal between the inner case, the gasket, and the outer case, but as the watch was submerged, the air pressure inside the case would remain constant while the water pressure outside the watch increased, pressing the two parts of the case more firmly together, increasing the force on the gasket and making the seal more water tight.

In his patent, Louis Alix suggests that the gasket, the item labelled "q" in the figure, should be made of rubber ("caoutchouc"). In the book OMEGA - A Journey through Time¹ this gasket is said to be leather, which I rather doubt because leather is not a very satisfactory gasket material and I don't think it would serve very well in this application.

Louis Alix's design for the case, shown in the figure from the patent, was for the case to have a curved shape of an arc of a circle. He doesn't explain why: it may have been to follow the shape of the wrist, or it may have been a purely aesthetic consideration, this was the age of Art Deco after all. I don't think this curved shape was actually ever produced, all the pictures of Omega Marines which I have seen (I have never been lucky enough to actually handle one) have been straight. The elegant curved shape envisaged by Alix would have been extremely difficult to make.

The 1939 Omega Marine Standard

In 1939 Omega introduced another rectangular waterproof watch called the Marine Standard. This watch had a simpler case than the 1932 Omega Marine, presumably to make it cheaper to make, and it also had the crown on the ouside of the case so that it was easy to wind every day and set the hands to the correct time. The Omega reference number for this watch was CK 3635, and it contained an Omega calibre T17 movement.

Crystal sealing gasket detail

Waterproofing was achieved by rubber gaskets for the crystal and in the case back, which sealed the joint between the case back and the middle part of the case containing the movement. The case back was held in place by two very distinctive clips. I don't know how the winding stem was made waterproof, it must have had a gland of some kind, but I don't know what material this was made from, or details of its design and how it was fitted. The case of the Omega Marine Standard was designed by Frédéric Baumgartner, a Geneva based case maker.

Frédéric Baumgartner obtained three patents on the design of this case. The first, CH 215449 was registered on the 28th of August 1940 and concerned a method of sealing the joint between the crystal and the case. The second patent, CH 216460 was also registered on the 28th of August 1940 and concerned a design of clip back case. The third, CH 220263 was registered on 30th June 1941, and reflected another design of clip back case.

The first patent CH 215449 shows how the joint between the crystal and the case can be sealed by a rubber gasket. The crystal and gasket are fitted from inside the case before the movement goes in. The figure from the patent shows how the rectangular plastic crystal 3 was moulded with an annular groove 4 with a lower shoulder 5 and an upper shoulder 6. A sealing ring or gasket 7 rests on the shoulder 5. The bezel presents an annular projection 8 which enters the groove 4 of the crystal, and the upper edge of the groove 4 in the crystal engages over the shoulder 6 of the bezel, while the lower shoulder 5 of the crystal presses the sealing ring against the bezel. To mount the crystal and sealing ring in the bezel, they are simply pushed upwards until the projection 8 of the bezel clips into the groove 4 in the crystal, holding the crystal and gasket in place.

Tissot

Charles Tissot & Son, Le Locle, Geneve, La Chaux de Fonds, was founded in 1853 as Charles F. Tissotby by Charles Félicien Tissot-Daguette with his son Charles Emile Tissot-Daguette. They developed a strong market in Russia but this was lost due to the Russian revolution in 1917. Tissot produced their first wristwatch in 1900. There were close family connections between Tissot and Omega.

Omega and Tissot

After the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent financial crisis, the market for watches collapsed in Europe. In 1930 Paul Tissot-Daguette was Managing Director of Omega, and Tissot and Omega formed a joint marketing organisation, Société Suisse pour l'Industrie Horlogére (SSIH) so that between them they could produce a complete range of watches but maintain separate companies.

The Omega and Tissot factories produced movements for both brands, the Omega factory specialising in more complex movements, such as some automatic self winding movements, and Tissot the simpler movements. Where essentially the same movements were produced in both factories, most parts are interchangable. But there are usually some differences between Omega and Tissot variants to prevent swapping movements between brands by watchmakers. Usually the dimensions were sightly different, but as Tissot tended more to the medium price range, some Tissot details were cheaper, such as Omega using a Breguet overcoil balance spring whereas the Tissot counterpart would have a flat spring.

1899 IWC Wrist Watch

IWC - International Watch Company

The International Watch Company, or IWC, was set up in Schaffhausen in the German-speaking region of Eastern Switzerland, in 1868 by the American engineer and watchmaker Florentine Ariosto Jones. Jones was in Switzerland to try to establish a factory using American mass production techniques and Swiss labour to make cheap watches to be imported to America. He received a poor reception in the traditional French speaking part of Switzerland and was attracted to Schaffhausen, far to the north and east of the traditional heart of the Swiss watchmaking industry, by Henri Moser, a watch maker and watch merchant who had set up a dam across the Rhine in 1868 which provided plenty of power for Jones' proposed factory.

Jones imported machine tools from USA, or had them made in-house, and brought together Swiss craftsmanship with the standardised precision of machine tools to increase the precision of the movements, and interchangeability of parts, which simplified assembly and repair work. The enterprise soon ran into financial difficulty, and was taken over by Johann Rauschenbach in 1879. Rauschenbach transformed the business and set it on a sound foundation.

Stauffer, Son & Co.

The firm of Stauffer, Son & Co. was established for watch manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1830. Pritchard records that by the 1860s Stauffer, Son & Co. had established a London branch, Stauffer & Co., to import watches to Britain. This firm was a trading partnership between Jules Stauffer (1808 - 1884) and Francis Claude, at 12 Old Jewry Chambers. It is not recorded exactly when this branch was established.

Jules Stauffer married Anne Blewitt from Bristol in England on 6th December 1837. The 1851 Census shows Jules and Anne Stauffer living at Courland House, Wandsworth Road, Clapham aged 42, occupation described as a Watch Manufacturer born in Switzerland. For some reason the census enumerator has added "Retired" to the occupation after it has been written. The family now has three children aged 7, 5 and 3, and a servant. Although Pritchard says the London firm was established "by the 1860s" these facts indicate that Jules Stauffer was resident in London well before this date.

The British arm was presumably called Stauffer & Co. after Jules Stauffer, who might be the son referred to in the name of the Swiss watch firm, Stauffer, Son & Co. The name Stauffer & Co. must have been the legal title of the British firm but they seem to always use the trading name Stauffer, Son & Co. in advertising and correspondence. On 3 January 1857 Jules Stauffer is recorded in The Times as speaking at a meeting of Swiss nationals in London.

The Times, August 1845

A report in The Times of a theft in 1842 of five watches being exported to India by a well known clock and watch retailer, A B Savory & Sons, of Cornhill London. The report stated that three of the watches were marked with the maker's name A B Savory and Son, and in the remaining two the maker's name was Stauffer. I am not sure yet whether these watches were imported by Savory, or imported by Stauffer & Co. and supplied wholesale to Savory.

When Jules Stauffer retired, Charles Nicolet became a partner in the firm. Again, the date is not recorded, but Jules Stauffer's death on the 4th of May 1884 in Brussels aged 76 was reported in The Times. His addresses were given as No 12 Old Jewry Chambers, and Clapham, Surrey. If Jules Stauffer retired at 65, that would have been in 1873. In 1874 Claude retired and Nicolet took over complete control of the London branch. Stauffer & Co. were listed as wholesale watch manufacturers and importers in trade directories of the period .

Charles Nicolet's initials CN were registered with the Assay Office on 1st March 1877 as a sponsor's mark for assay, and these initials appear with the hallmarks in watches imported by the London branch. In 1876 an Act, first passed in 1867, was reenacted, that all foreign plate imported should be marked with the letter F in an oval cameo in addition to the usual marks. It may have been this act which persuaded Nicolet to register his mark and details as a sponsor with the assay office, or it may have been just that he wanted to bring this aspect of the business under his control. Imported gold and silver was required to be properly marked even before the 1867 Act which introduced the F mark. Before Nicolet registered his own mark, Stauffer & Co. may have used an agent as sponsor or, as a wholesaler, may have been supplying companies which themselves acted as sponsors and had the items assayed for retail. It is possible that they retained the services of A B Savory & Sons for this purpose.

The following letter appeared in the journal of the British Horological Institute in September 1885. I think it is very interesting, so I have reproduced it here in full.

Here is the movement of a pocket watch produced in the Stauffer Son & Co. Atlas factory. You can see straight away that even though it is a fairly simple pocket watch movement, it is nicely made and finished. Some notable features are:

• Cylinder escapement
• Brass balance wheel, no temperature compensation
• Going barrel - no fusee - typical Swiss arrangement
• Fully bridged - no top plate, unlike the full and three quarter plate movements described by Lecluse.
• Key wind and set
• Jeweled to the third wheel with clear jewels
• Gilded plates and bridges, blued screws

The movement is marked "Stauffer Cx De Fonds" for Stauffer Son & Co. Chaux-de-Fonds and has the SS&C in a shield trademark registered by Stauffer Son & Co. in 1880. I don't know when the movement was made, but it was presumably after the 1880 date of registration of the trade mark. It might be thought odd that key winding watches were still being produced after keyless winding was introduced in about 1850, but Lecluse's letter of 1885 refers to key winding watches, amusingly he calls them "non-keyless", and in fact key wind watches were produced into the 20th century. I guess that together with the cylinder escapement this kept the cost down.

The Watchmaker Jeweller and Silversmith reported watches, chromometers and repeating watches exhibited by Stauffer & Co. at the 1885 Inventions Exhibition in London. The firm moved to 13 Charterhouse Street, Holborn, London, on 23rd Feb. 1887. In 1889 Charles Nicolet was recorded in report in The Times concerning some stolen watches as "Charles Nicolét trading as Stauffer & Co. Charterhouse Street." From 1892 the company name was changed to Nicolet Fils et Cie, indicating that Nicolet had taken over the whole company, Swiss factory and all, but the Stauffer name and the SS & Co and S&Co. marks continued to be used, and they also registered Atlas as a trade mark. After this the name of the company appears to fluctuate between variations of Nicolet and Stauffer, and later Atlas, but as they carried on using the Stauffer brand over the period I am interested in, that is the name I will use.

Pritchard gives Charles Nicolet's lifetime as 1856 - 1944. This is at variance with an obituary in the British Horological Institute's Journal of June 1940 which reports the death of Charles Nicolet at Montreux, Switzerland at the age of 88. The obituary reports that he had been in poor health for some time prior to his death, and since his retirement the business of Stauffer Son & Co. had been controlled by his son George Nicolet. The 1911 census gives Charles Nicolet's birth year as 1853, which agrees with the obituary.

In July 1894 the British Horological Institute's Journal reported the death of Mr A Nicolet-Rossel, late senior partner of the Swiss firm Stauffer Son & Co. which took place at Chaux-de-Fonds on the 27th June.

Kew Observatory Trial Successes

In 1891 the following editorial appeared in the Feuille D'Avis De Neuchatel.

Watchmaking. - A watch factory in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the firm Stauffer Son and Co., has just achieved at the Kew Observatory in England, a serious success. One of their watches, a pocket chronometer, observed in this institution, earned 91.6 points out of 100 which is the maximum. That matches the highest known in the observatory, or the figure of 89.1 points obtained by British manufacturers which had not been exceeded up to now.

I understand that this success was repeated in 1893 but I have not found the evidence for this yet.

Complications - Chronographs, Counter, Split Seconds

The letter by Lecluse does not mention any complicated watches. The highly automated factory Lecluse describes is more suitable for turning out large quantites of high quality standard watches that would have a wide appeal, which they would need to have to sell at over 1,200 per week!. However, in the 1890s, about the time that the company name was changed to Nicolet Fils et Cie, there appears to also be an addition of complicated chronograph watches to the Stauffer range. This seems to coincide with the takeover of the Stauffer firm by the Nicolet family, presumably when the last Stauffer died without heir.

In 1892 a patent was granted to Georges Nicolet of Nicolet Fils et Cie. The Swiss patent is number CH 4821, Perfectionnement apporté aux mécanismes de chronographes-compteurs (Improvement made to the mechanisms of counter chronographs). The first chronographs had a simple seconds hand to show elapsed seconds. A counter chronograph is one that can record minutes and sometimes hours by additional indicators on the dial.

This Georges Nicolet could not have been the son of the London based Charles Nicolet, because the 1911 Census records George Nicolet's birth year as 1882, so he would have been only 10 in 1892 when the patent was granted.

A Stauffer, Son & Co. 1901 patent CH 24,577 "Mécanisme de chronographe" is itself quite interesting, not just from a technical viewpoint. This entry from a December 1902 edition of La Federation Horlogere Suiss refers to the same Patent CH 24,577. It seems that Stauffer Son and Co. ayant cause de l'inventeur, successor of the inventor somehow acquired the rights to this patent from Henri Onésime Stauffer of Ponts-de-Martel. The name which appears on the published patent is Stauffer Son & Co., so Nicolet must have acquired the rights between registration and publication.

Henri Onésime Stauffer founded his own watch making company in 1850, and won Honourable Mention for finished watches at the 1881 National Exhibition of Horology in La Chaux-de-Fonds. He seems to have specialised in repeating watches, so the patent CH 24,577 may be one that he decided that he didn't want to pursue and made it over to Stauffer Son. and Co. who did make use of it.

Les Ponts-de-Martel is a municipality in the district of Le Locle, and Jaquet and Chapuis mention that "This district has long been known for its highly complicated watches, and for excellent watches in general". Henri Onésime Stauffer received many Swiss and US patents, including for repeating and chronograph watches. It was an improvement to his 1887 patent for a repeating watch that was improved by Charles Meylan of New York, whose 1888 patent US 390,501 was used in the third model of repeating watch produced by Waltham. The Waltham Watch Company remains the only American watch manufactory that produced a repeating watch, and these were made in very small numbers.

The early Waltham repeaters are thought to have used Swiss designs and parts by George Aubert of Vaud. The repeating mechanisms, after having been acquired abroad, were then fitted to the movements by the New York agents for Waltham. Whether Henri Onésime Stauffer supplied parts for the movements made to the Charles Meylan patent is not known, but would appear unlikely, he probably just provided the inspiration for Meylan, although he may have received some payment for the use of his patented design.

The Gordon Bennett Cup Races

The 1892 and subsequent patents seem to mark the entry into the world of high quality complicated chronograph watches by Nicolet Fils et Cie, trading as Stauffer Son & of La Chaux-de-Fonds and London. The first major sporting event to which they supplied split second counter chronographs for timing to that I have been able to find evidence of was the 1903 Gordon Bennett cup race held in Ireland, and the subsequent 1904 and 1905 races held in Germany and France respectively.

The Gordon Bennett cup for motor racing was one of three trophy cups created by James Gordon Bennett, Jr. (1841 - 1918). Gordon Bennett was publisher of the New York Herald newspaper, which had been founded by his father, James Gordon Bennett, Sr, and was extremely wealthy. He was educated primarily in France, and emigrated there in 1877 after an incident in New York which gave rise to the saying &Gordon Bennett!& as an expression of incredulity.

The Gordon Bennett cup races of 1900, 1901 and 1902 were held as part of races between major towns on public roads over one day. After the 1901 Paris-Bordeaux race, in which at least eight people had been killed, and severe accidents during the 1903 Paris-Madrid race, which had to be halted at Bordeaux because there had been so many accidents, the 1903 and later Gordon Bennett cup races consisted of competitors completing three timed laps of closed circular course. This required much more precision in timing than the city to city dashes, where the first to arrive was the winner. For the 1903 race, Stauffer Son & Co. supplied 91 split second counter chronographs, which were highly praised by the chief timekeeper and others after the race.

This must have been quite a red letter day for Stauffer because after the race the La Federation Horlogere Suisse published the following editorial:

A correspondent in Sydney Australia sent me this picture of a mark in the back of a watch from his late father's collection - a Stauffer/Nicolet split second silver chronograph in excellent working condition. The picture is of the Gordon Bennett motor racing cup. As The Times, Friday, Jan 30, 1903 described it "it is not a cup at all, but a model of a motor car carrying two figures in anything but motor costume." The two figures are in fact female, balanced precariously on the motor car and clad in very diaphonous dresses.

Subsequently Stauffer Son & Co. supplied split second counter chronographs for the 1904 and 1905 Gordon Bennett cup races, and may other sporting events, and they also entered chronographs for the Kew Observatory time trials with success. In 1907 the La Federation Horlogere Suisse published the following editorial:

This advert from the 1920 edition of the Indicateur Davoine states that Stauffer, Son & Co. are manufacturers of chronographs which have won first prizes and first class awards from Kew, Neuchatel and Geneva, and been adopted by the English Admiralty. The telegraphic address is the factory name Atlas, Chaux-de-Fonds. The advert refers to Systèmes Brevétes, or patented systems.

Considering that Stauffer Son & Co seems to have beem a successful watch manufacturer, with a large modern factory in 1885 and Kew and other observatory trial winning chronographs used at many large sporting events, it is strange that they seem to have disappeared without trace. The Stauffer name seems to have been dropped from the Swiss watch making operation in the 1920s in favour of Atlas Watch Co, although the London firm continued to use the name Stauffer Son & Co.

Stauffer, Son & Co. and IWC

Marks on an IWC movement

According to IWC, from 1894 the London branch of Stauffer, Son & Co. was supplied with watches from Schaffhausen, and from 1898 the movements of these bore the mark "S&Co." under a crown inside an oval with the words "Peerless" and Swiss made. Both bare (uncased) movements and complete watches were supplied by IWC to Stauffer & Co.

The S & Co. mark with a crown inside an oval was registered by Stauffer Son & Co. in 1880, and Peerless was a trademark registered by Stauffer, Son & Co. in 1896, so IWC didn't have control of these marks and Stauffer could use them any way they chose. Clearly the presence of these marks alone does not prove that a movement was made by IWC. According to Michael Friedberg, a moderator of the IWC Forum and a man who knows his IWCs, there are non-IWC movements - he says plenty of them - marked S&Co. and/or Peerless.

Stauffer & Co. retained its monopoly over the import of the IWC watch brand until the mid-1930s. Thereafter they were sold under their original IWC trade name, as they had been prior to 1898. In 1936, the firm of Edwin Harrop of 99-119 Rosebery Ave, London was advertising that they were concessionaires for the British Empire for IWC watches. At the same time, Stauffer, Son & Co. were advertising Peerless and Peertone watches.

Sometimes one sees watches marked SS&Co. or S&Co. advertised as if they were made by IWC. This is because IWC today is a prestigious and very expensive make, and the sellers hope to get a better price by associating the watch with the IWC name. If the mark is S&Co. (note the single "S") in an oval under a crown like the one shown here on the right, and the movement is also marked Peerless, then it could be an IWC, but this is not guaranteed.

Longines

Longines' watch making origins date to 1832 in Saint-Imier, Switzerland when the company was founded by Auguste Agassiz. In 1866 a new watch factory was built at a location called "Les Longines" (meaning "long meadow") and the Longines Watches brand was born. Longines trademark of a winged hourglass was registered in 1874 and is one of the oldest registered for a watchmaker. In 1905 Longines started making ladies wrist watches, and in 1910 introduced a man's wristwatch.

The following letter was publised in the Horological Journal of July 1885.

Gruen

Gruen made both men's and women's wristwatches starting in 1908, but these proved popular only with women. Like the others mentioned here, Gruen was one of the few companies to take wristwatches seriously this early, seeing their potential in spite of disappointing early sales to men. Gruen made both wrist and pocket watches for the military during World War One. Most had silver cases, which would tarnish but would not corrode under the conditions in the trenches, and to meet U.S. military regulations, luminous dial markings and hands.

Movado

Movado was founded in 1881 by 19-year old entrepreneur Achille Ditesheim in the village of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. The name of the firm was changed to Movado, meaning "always in motion" in the international language of Esperanto, in 1905

In 1912 Movado created the Polyplan, a revolutionary, patented movement constructed on three planes to fit a case curved to follow the wrist, and in 1914 developed their "Soldier's Watch" with an integral protective grill or shrapnel guard in a shrewd anticipation of the forthcoming conflict. This was a very successful product for Movado, and it is believed that they sold some 2,000 each year during the First World War.

Gallet Chronograph

Gallet et Cie

Gallet are one of the oldest watchmakers in the business, tracing their history back to one Humbertus Gallet, who in 1466 moved from Bourg-en-Bresse in France to Geneva and was a builder of tower clocks. His family were joined some 220 years later by other members of the Gallet family, who were recorded as goldsmiths and watchmakers.

Gallet claim to have made in 1912 the first wristwatch to include a centre second hand, that is one originating from the centre of the dial along with the hour and minute hands. Previously wristwatches either lacked a second hand or had a small subsidiary seconds dial which was difficult to read accurately. A centre second hand is useful for timing tasks such measuring the human heart rate. Gallet's "sweep second" watches were issued to nurses and military medical personnel during World War 1.

Gallet claim to have made in 1914 the first chronograph wristwatch, which they say was made to the order of the British military, but I have not been able to substantiate this claim. This watch was a reduced size version of a traditional pocket chronograph, for which Gallet were well known, and still featured the three piece case, enamel dial, and centre button (pusher) crown of its larger predecessor.

Electa Movement

1903 Electa Advert

Gallet and Electa

A number of my watches have the movement shown here, which I have identified as being an Electa/Gallet movement on the basis of the name Electa on the dial of the first watch I collected which had this movement. But I have never been able to really prove this beyond doubt because it doesn't feature in any of the movement identification catalogues which I have, none of which have any Gallet or Electa movements at all. I would really like to nail this as a positive identification, but there is a problem. I doubt that this movement will appear in any old parts catalogues because of the story related in the other pictures I have included.

On their web site in the history time line section, Gallet say (Gallet & Co) that they acquired Electa in 1855 by taking over a firm called Grumbach & Co., which produced watches with the brand name Electa.

However, the advert from a 1903 edition of "La Fderation Horologere Suisse" clearly shows that a company called Société d'horlogerie Electa, described as an "ancient watch making company of Geneva" held the registered trademark (Marque déposé) at that time, i.e. 1903. This evidence flatly contradicts the statement on the Gallet web site.

1907 transfer notice

The February 1907 transfer notice shows the rights to a design registered on 1st November 1906 being transferred from Société d'horlogerie Electa to "Gallet & Co., Fabrique d'horlogerie Electa". This would appear to correspond with an entry in the Gallet timeline which says that in 1906 "The company name "Gallet & Cie, Fabrique d'horlogerie Electa" is registered to reinforce Gallet's ownership and control of the Electa brand. Under the Electa name, Gallet produces its highest quality timepieces." These two items suggest to me that Société d'horlogerie Electa were still independent on 1st November 1906, and that Gallet actually acquired Electa after this date.

1914 notice

So far, so good. But now here's the real problem. The 1914 announcement of "Radiations", which I believe in this context means something like "Strikings off" or "expulsion", shows Gallet & Co., Fabrique d'horlogerie Electa, in liquidation!

The company appears to have struggled on under the administration of the liquidators because the 1923 advert shows that the Electa factory is offered for sale or to rent, including a machine shop suitable for making watch, ebauches or other parts. It would appear that this offer was not taken up because the 1926 notice advises of the dispersal sale of the Electa factory, land, and contents.

1926 notice

1923 notice

How this story fits in with the Gallet time line on their web site is a complete mystery to me. I guess that the Electa factory was purchased as a going concern and a new division of Gallet, "Gallet & Co., Fabrique d'horlogerie Electa", was formed to run it. Evidently it was not successful and the main Gallet business had isolated itself sufficiently from Gallet & Co., Fabrique d'horlogerie Electa that the liquidation of that branch did not affect the main business. And presumably Gallet could have acquired the trademark of Electa from the liquidators if they wished to carry on using it, although the last mention of Electa in the timeline is 1915 and says "Gallet supplies hand held and cockpit mounted timers to the British Air Force during WW I. Movements are produced in Gallet's Electa workshop and marked with the Electa name.".

I have written to Gallet asking them about this subject but have yet to receive a reply.

The Grumbach name, supposedly taken over by Gallet in 1855, surfaces again in 1920. Pritchard shows an advert by Grumbach.

If you have any corrections, questions, suggestions, or comments, then please drop me a line at . You shouldn't need to copy the email address, just click on it. I look forward to hearing from you! If you don't receive a reply in a couple of days, please check your junk and spam folders.

Regards - David