franÇois borgel, louisa borgel, and the taubert family watchcase makers of … · 2017-02-28 ·...

NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin • September/October 2012 • 481www.nawcc.org

FRANÇOIS BORGEL, LOUISA BORGEL,AND THE TAUBERT FAMILY

Watchcase Makers of Geneva, Part Oneby David Boettcher (ENG)

gold. The watch has London import hallmarks for 1914/15 and an International Watch Co. (IWC) caliber-64 movement. It was imported by Stauffer & Co. of London. IWC was an early customer for Borgel pocket watchcases, as was Longines, which also took up the wristwatch version when it became available around 1910 and continued using it for many years. Rolex made watches with water-resistant Borgel cases

in the early 1920s, which started them on the path that led to the waterproof Rolex Oyster. After François Borgel’s death in 1912, the business was carried on by his daugh-ter Louisa Borgel.

In 1924 Louisa Borgel sold the business to the Taubert family of Le Locle, who continued to use the Borgel FB-key trademark (to the great confusion of many watch col-lectors) and carried on the business until the 1970s. The Tauberts initially continued to manufacture the Borgel screw watchcase, subsequently continuing Borgel’s pio-neering work by developing their own successful designs for waterproof cases and introducing modern materials and production techniques. They supplied cases to many watch manufacturers from the 1930s into the 1970s.

Patek Philippe sought out the Taubert Company for its exper-tise in working with stainless steel, but it recognized the qual-ity of its waterproof cases and used them for waterproof watch-es and chronographs. Figure 3 shows one of its high-grade prod-ucts, a Patek Philippe, reference 1463, chronograph in an 18-car-at, water-resistant, screw-back case designed and patented by the Tauberts. Vacheron Constan-tin departed from its usual gold cases and used Tauberts’ stainless steel waterproof cases ... but we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s take a look at the paradoxi-cally little known history of this illustrious company from the be-ginning.

This article is published in three parts. Part one cov-ers the work of François Borgel, part two, his daughter Louisa’s role in the company. Part three will cover the work of the Taubert family.

Foreword

When I started collecting wristwatches, one of the fi rst watches I bought had an

unusual type of case in which the movement screwed into the case from the front. Inside the case back were the initials “FB” over a key (Figure 1). The vendor described this as a “Bor-gel” case, but he didn’t seem to know any more about it than that.

I am an associate member of the British Horological Institute (BHI), and a search of past copies of the Horological Journal yielded a short article published in 1997 by Dennis Harris that revealed some more details about a watchcase maker named François Borgel, con-fi rmed that the FB-key mark was his trademark, that it had been fi rst registered in Geneva in 1887, that an “L. Beauverd-Borgel” had later registered the same mark, and then it had passed to “Taubert et Fils.”1 But that was all I could fi nd. I became interested in this François Borgel. For instance, why would someone in the watch trade use a door key as part of his trademark? I decided to try to fi nd out more about him.

Introduction

Toward the end of the nineteenth century in Geneva, Switzerland, François Borgel started a business mak-

ing watchcases. Borgel was a talented inventor and suc-cessful businessman, and his business grew into one of the most important Swiss watchcase manufacturers. Over the years this company conceived of and patented many innovative designs for watchcases, particularly in the fi eld of water-resistant and waterproof watchcases, and supplied watch-cases to many Swiss watch man-ufacturers—some unknown and some very well known. Many collectors of vintage watches will have watches with cases made by this company, perhaps without even realizing it.

The best known of François Borgel’s inventions was a pat-ented design for a dustproof and dampproof screw case for pocket and wristwatches that is usually referred to as simply a “Borgel case.” Figure 2 shows a wristwatch with one of these Borgel screw cases in 18-carat

Figure 1. The Borgel FB-key

trademark.

Figure 2. Borgel wristwatch, 18-carat,

IWC movement.

Figure 3. Patek Philippe, reference

1463.

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© 2012 National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, Inc. Reproduction prohibited without written permission.

482 • September/October 2012 • NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin www.nawcc.org

François Borgel

François Borgel was born on August 22, 1856, the son of Laurent Borgel and Marie Besson. In local records

he was described as a “watch case fi tter” (i.e., a maker of watchcases).1

François Borgel registered his trademark (marque de fabrique) in Geneva on March 17, 1887, as shown in the registration (Figure 4) published in the offi cial Swiss trademarks register, the Archives de l’Horlogerie.2 The registration shows that François Borgel was a manufac-turer [fabricant], an important dis-tinction, and his registered [déposée] trademark proudly bears his initials FB together with a key, an ancient symbol from the coat

of arms of the city of Geneva (Figure 5). This key is derived from the keys of St. Peter and is the symbol of Bishop Adhé-mar Fabry, who in 1387 granted Geneva its great charter, the basis of its commu-nal self-government. This resolves the mystery of why someone in the watch trade would use a door key as part of his trademark: Borgel was a proud citizen of Geneva, the historic center of Swiss watchmaking. The registration also

shows he made Boîtes de montres, which translates liter-ally as “boxes of watches.” The correct translation into English is “watchcases” in gold [or] silver [argent] and steel [acier] and also other horological items.

Geneva watchcase makers had established their own guild in 1698, and aspiring guild members were required to spend fi ve years as an apprentice of a guild member master craftsman, followed by three years as a compagnonemployee of the master. The compagnon then had to produce and submit his “master piece.” If the piece was approved, he was admitted to the guild and granted the title “master.” Guild membership entitled him to open his own shop and take on an apprentice of his own. The medieval guilds had lost their powers by Borgel’s time, but the trade unions still insisted on apprenticeships as a way of controlling the number of workers entering the trade, in order to maintain wages.

Geneva’s watch industry was collectively termed La Fabrique [the Factory], and at its peak around 1780 La Fabrique employed some 5,000 people, two-thirds of them in the St. Gervais district around the Place Cor-navin, the heart of the Rive Droite or Right Bank, the “newest” part of the city of Geneva on the north bank of the river Rhone. These workers worked in workshops set on the top fl oor under the roofs of houses, with large windows to admit the maximum amount of light, freez-ing cold in winter, and boiling hot in summer. They were called “chambers” or “cabins,” and “chamber worker” or cabinotier Genève was the name given to the watchmak-

ers, enamelers, engravers, gem set-ters, gilders, watchcase makers, and others in the horological trade who worked in them.

In these workshops watchcases were made entirely by hand. The workshops of the cabineteers lo-cated under the eaves of houses did not allow the installation of heavy machinery, because the structures of the houses were not designed for

it. Watchcases were made in silver, gold, and later, plati-num. Sheets of the precious metal were cut into circles and pounded into wooden formers with a hammer to make dished parts such as the case back. Smelted bar was rolled square and to size in a hand-driven squaring mill. The bezel was made by forming a length of this bar into a circle with pliers and soldering the ends together. The middle part was made similarly, often by forming sev-eral rings and then soldering them together, particularly when working with gold, due to its cost.

Machining was done on a hand-turned “bow-lathe” (so-called because it was turned by a device shaped like a bow) with a wooden “chuck” to which the case parts were attached. Even the tubes used to make the case hinges were made by rolling a strip of sheet into a rough tube and then pulling it through successively smaller holes in a draw plate. There was a lot of hammering and bending by hand and a lot of soldering. Britten says that a hunter case required 50 separate soldering operations.3 At the time of writing there is a video on YouTube showing Mar-tin Matthews making a watchcase by using these meth-ods.4 (The full-length video, Four Generations of Watch-case Making: A Profi le of Martin Matthews, is available for lending from the NAWCC Library.) Martin is the fourth generation of a Clerkenwell, London, family of watchcase makers who have been making watchcases in this way for nearly 200 years.

At the end of the nineteenth century, mechanization was slowly forcing the cabineteers out of their garrets and into more suitable workshops, but Jaquet and Chapuis5

show an illustration by N. Guénardeau dated as late as 1892 of the workshop (Figure 6) of an emboîteur (which translates literally as “one who puts things in boxes” and is often called a “boxer-in” in the English-speaking trade), a watchcase maker at 16 Rue de Cornavin in the St-Ger-vais quarter of Geneva. This is almost certainly the area of Geneva where Borgel served his apprenticeship, per-haps in a little workshop like the one illustrated, where everything was done by hand, or perhaps in a more mod-ern workshop with heavier machinery.

Figure 4. Borgel’s trademark registration.

Figure 5. Geneva coat

of arms.

M. Borgel was Swiss-French and therefore would not sound the “g” in Borgel as a hard sound; rather, it would be a soft sound, so his name would sound something like “Borzshel.”



1880:The Foundation of the Borgel Company

A supplement in the Journal de Genève,6 dated October 12, 1896, reported on the second Swiss National Ex-

hibition and gave 1880 as the foundation of the Borgel Company; the same date appeared in an advertisement in the Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie in April 1925 where Tau-bert & Fils described themselves as “Successors of Louisa Beauverd-Borgel, a company founded in 1880.” François Borgel was born in 1856, and in 1880 he would have been 23 or 24, just the sort of age to have fi nished his appren-ticeship and start his own business.

The Journal de Genève for January 29, 1886, recorded Borgel’s workshop address as 17 Place Cornavin, Geneva and noted that this was “the old Tiffany factory.” The American fi rm Tiffany & Co., the New York goldsmith and jeweler, set up a factory in Geneva in 1872 with the idea of making its own watches. The factory used the lat-est American steam-powered machinery and machine production techniques and employed Swiss labor. But the Geneva craftsmen did not like the American way of working, and the factory had a short life, closing down in 1876.

In a letter to the Horological Journal in 1879 Patek Philippe recorded that it had assumed the management of the Tiffany watch business in Geneva and had under-

taken to supply Tiffany with watches7; this had presum-ably taken place three years earlier than the letter, in 1876 when Tiffany stopped making watches. Patek Philippe stated that it did not use the Tiffany building or any of the machinery, that most of the machinery had been re-turned to America, and that it made the watches for Tif-fany in its own factory, so the Tiffany factory building stood empty.

Patek Philippe advertised the factory for rent in the Journal de Genève in 1878 and 1879 on behalf of Tiffany, noting that the workshops had steam power, which must have been left in place when the rest of the machinery was removed. The boilers were in the basement and probably powered steam engines also in the basement, which would have driven belts turning shafts on each fl oor, from which power could be taken off to drive the machinery. These advertisements were not repeated after 1879 and the fact that François Borgel founded his com-pany in 1880, which we know from the Journal de Genève was by 1886 located at 17 Place Cornavin, was most likely not a coincidence. It seems that François Borgel leased the factory from Tiffany via Patek Philippe in 1880 as his fi rst place of business.

An advertisement (Fig-ure 7) in the 1888 edition of the Indicateur Davoine8

stated that François Borgel, 17 Place Cornavin, made watchcases “by mechani-cal methods” [par procé-dés mécaniques], so he was most likely putting the building’s steam power to good use. The craftsmen employed by Borgel were probably using powered lathes to spin the case bowls instead of hammering them into shape and to turn the bezels and case middle parts. The advertisement also says that Borgel was awarded a diploma at an exhibition in Zurich in 1883. This was Switzerland’s fi rst National Exhibition, held at Platzspitz in Zurich, now the site of the Swiss National Museum. Around 6,000 exhibitors took part, and a jury gave scores for individual products.

Borgel’s First Patents

Swiss patent law lagged behind other European coun-tries and America, and the fi rst Swiss patents were

not registered until 1888. François Borgel was evidently ready and waiting for this, because on December 3, 1888, he was granted Swiss Patent No. CH 16 (yes, it was the sixteenth Swiss patent issued!) for a new way of making metallic plates for watchcases, lockets, and other jewelry. (Brevet Suisse No. 16. Nouvelle composition des plaques mé-talliques servant à la fabrication des boîtes de montres, médai-llons et autres bijoux.)

Figure 6. L’emboiteur (watchcasemaker) by N. Guenardeau 1892.

Figure 7. 1888 Borgel advertisement.



Borgel’s process was to apply a layer of gold onto an iron or steel plate and then remove some of the gold with a graver (an engraving tool) to expose the iron or steel below. Depending on the amount of gold removed, this could give the appearance of a gold item with the contrasting base metal showing through or a steel item with pieces of gold attached to it. Figure 8 shows a pocket watchcase made by Bor-gel using this technique with a beautiful dragon design. The watchcase is a Borgel patent screw case (described in the next section) that contains an IWC move-ment. The case serial number is 133,516 and the movement number is 115,316. It was sold by IWC on May 20, 1895, to Didisheim-Goldschmid of La Chaux de fonds. The movement is an IWC caliber 52, 19 ligne H7, which was built in 1884. The case is described in the IWC archives as acier à vis oxide, which means an oxidized steel screw case.

Black oxidizing, as the process is usually called, in-volves immersing steel parts in a caustic soda (sodium hydroxide [NaOH]) salt bath at about 140 degrees Celsius (290 degrees Farenheit). The reaction between the iron in the steel and the hot oxide bath produces magnetite (Fe3O4), which forms an attractive and marginally corro-sion-resistant dark black fi nish on the surface of the part. The parts are usually oiled or waxed after treatment to improve corrosion protection. Because of the tempera-ture and the caustic materials involved, it is a dangerous process. Borgel must have used his patented technique of removing part of a layer of gold to form the design and then dipped the case in the hot solution to blacken the exposed steel. Presumably, he must have discovered that the blackening process did not affect the gold or that the gold could be polished after the steel was blackened. This must have been a diffi cult process to get right, but the results on the case of the watch shown in Figure 8 are stunning.

An addition to the fi rst patent was granted to Borgel on March 28, 1889, “Brevet Additionnel No 9,” with the same title as the fi rst patent. This addition extended the technique described in the fi rst patent by applying sev-eral layers of different colors of gold (green gold, red gold, etc.) so that these different colors could be revealed by selective use of the graver, creating the effect of a rainbow of colors.

Borgel evidently used this process with success. A re-port by Tripplin on the French International Watch and Clock Making Exhibition of 1889 recorded that “A Gene-va exhibitor, M. Borgel, shows artistic case making, a steel case with encrustations of gold struck us favourably... ”9

Having established his own business, and now attracting favorable comment with this eye-catching patented tech-

nique, Borgel was starting to forge his own way in the world and make a name for himself.

Borgel was granted a second patent in 1888 for a watch with a fi xed case back and reversed regulator. The fi xed back meant that the back and middle parts of the case were in one piece, doing away with the joint between the middle part of the case and the back; Borgel was start-ing to think about improved case sealing. The problem he envisaged with this de-sign was that if the watch was running fast or slow, it would not be possible to open the back of the case and adjust the regulator. To overcome this, he brought the lever of the regulator around the side of the movement to the front of the case

at the side of the dial, where it could be accessed by open-ing the front bezel.

Borgel’s PatentOne-Piece Screw Watchcase

Borgel’s patent for the one-piece screw-in

watchcase design that now most often bears his name was published on October 28, 1891, with the Swiss Brevet,or Patent No., 4001 (CH 4001, François Borgel à Genève. Nouvelle boîte de montre); see Figure 9. This patent was also registered in the United Kingdom on November 24, 1891, with British Patent No. 20,422, and in America with U.S. Pat-ent No. 478,734, dated July 12, 1892. The British version gave his address at the time as 1 Place Cornevin [sic], Geneva. This change of address number, from 17 to 1, could indicate a move, possibly to larger premises, but because Cornavin is in-correctly spelled Cornevin, it is most likely also an error.

The Borgel screw watchcase was designed to be resis-tant to dust and moisture. The drawing from the patent is shown in Figure 9, but the details are rather diffi cult to see, so I have made a clearer sketch of the important parts in Figure 10. The parts are labeled the same in both Figure 9 and Figure 10.

Figure 8. Borgel case with dragon design.

Figure 9. Borgel patent CH 4001.



The case back and middle part of the Borgel screw case are in one piece, A, so there is no opening at the back to let in dust or moisture. The front opening of the case is thickened and threaded internally at a with a fi ne thread. The movement, B, with dial, H, and hands is mounted in the ex-ternally threaded carrier ring, C, held in place by case screws s (shown in my sketch only). The bezel, F, with the crystal, G, is a press fi t onto the outer end of the carrier ring. The whole assembly of the threaded car-rier ring with the movement, dial, hands, bezel, and crystal is screwed into the case from the front.

To enable rotation of the carrier ring in the case, to screw the move-ment in and out, the winding stem is split into two parts, an inner part in the movement, D, and an outer part, D’, in the pendant tube on the case. The piece of the stem in the move-ment has a square section on its outer end. The other piece of the stem, with the winding crown, is mounted in the pendant, E, on the side of the case and has a hollow square in its end that en-gages with the square end of the stem in the movement.

In the patent drawing Borgel shows the part of the stem in the pendant tube held in place with a screw e that engages with a groove on the stem. To insert or with-draw the movement, it would have been necessary to undo this screw and withdraw the part of the stem from the pendant. I have never seen a watch with this type of split stem, but the crown and split stem shown in Figure 12 arrived with some old crowns and looks like one of these. The stem has the square hole in the end and a groove around the shaft for the screw.

However, if this design was ever used, it must have been for only a short time because all of the Borgel watch-es that I have seen, including some very early ones, have the part of the stem in the pendant held in place by a

spring, j (shown in my sketch only), so that the stem can be held out of the way of the ro-tating movement by simply pulling on the crown. A collar, k, in the end of the pendant, secured by a pin, retains the spring.

Because of the split stem, stem setting of the hands by

a positive set keyless mechanism (which relies on being positively pulled into the hand-setting position by the action of withdrawing the stem) is not possible, and a separate pushpin next to the crown, some-times called a pin-set or nail-set, is used to switch between winding and hand setting. Borgel watches with movements with the American-style negative set hand-setting mecha-nism, which does work with the split stem, are occasionally seen, but they are rare; one is described in a later section.

An exploded view of a Borgel watch is shown in Figure 11. You should be able to make out the threads in the front opening of the case, which the carrier ring screws into, and the holes in the side of the carrier ring for the winding stem and pushpin hand-set-ting mechanism. The two case screws hold the movement in the carrier ring, and the bezel pushes onto the front or top edge of the carrier ring

after the movement has been put in place.Figure 13 shows a pocket watch in one of these Borgel

one-piece screw cases. Characteristic features are the mill-ing (coin edge milling) around the edge of the bezel to give a grip so that it can be unscrewed and the push-piece to the right of the pendant for setting the hands. Also readily noticeable is the absence of case hing-es and, if the case can be examined closely, a joint for a separate case back.

Figure 10. Sketch cross section of Borgel case.

Figure 11.Exploded Borgel watch.

Figure 12. Early split stem.

Figure 13. Borgel pocket watch.



Borgel’s business must have been already successful, or he had some signifi cant fi nancial backing, because the quarter-page advertisement shown in Figure 14 ap-peared in many editions of trade journals over the next few years, notably the Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie10 and La Fédération Horlogère Suisse.11 The ad promoted the patent design as a “New economic and waterproof watch case” and stated “Patent in all countries - Counterfeiters will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” It also quoted

Figure 14. Borgel screw watchcase advertisement.

Removing the Movement from a Borgel Case

To insert or remove the movement assembly from the case, the crown is pulled out against a spring so that the split winding stem is pulled clear of the movement. Then the bezel with the movement attached can be unscrewed from, or screwed into, the case from the front. The thread is very fi ne and you need to be careful to not get it crossed when screwing it in.

The bezel is a push fi t on the outer end of the threaded carrier ring. There is a joint between the bezel and the carrier ring just above the beginning of the threads. Insert a case knife into the joint and gently pry the bezel off the carrier ring. Ease the bezel in several places around the carrier ring to avoid the risk of twisting.

Once the bezel is removed, the movement can be removed from the carrier ring by removing the case screws, or part turning them if they are half-headed dog screws. These are usually on the top of the movement, but are sometimes down in one of the channels between the bridges engaging slots cut into the side of the carrier ring. Once the case screws are removed or turned, you can push the movement out of the front of the carrier ring.

from an article in the Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie, which emphasized the strength imparted to the assembled case by the carrier ring supporting the back of the case and said it also forms an effective dust guard, achieving complète imperméabilité.

The carrier ring replaces part of the middle section of a normal watchcase, the inner part that would carry the movement. Because the carrier ring can be made of base metal rather than the silver or gold of the external watchcase, a considerable saving in those costly materi-als is achieved: Borgel says 30-40 percent, which could certainly make the case an attractive economic proposi-tion.

The fi nal item of the ad says that Borgel is offering for sale licenses to manufacture the patent watchcase and that a list of authorized manufacturers will be pub-lished. I do not think any manufacturer took up this offer because later in advertisements (not shown in this article) Borgel stated that “only the inventor of the pat-ent, F. Borgel in Geneva, is authorised to manufacture this watch case.”

Imperméable?

Just how imperméable (which strictly means “not al-lowing fl uid to pass through”) actually was Borgel’s

one-piece screw case? By eliminating the back case joint and improving the sealing of the front case joint, Bor-gel produced a watchcase that was considerably better sealed than the typical cases of the time, with their hinged and snap-closed case back joints. But although it was described as imperméable in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century advertisements, it was certainly not waterproof in the sense that we understand it today,

such as a diver’s watch that can withstand water pressure at depths of hundreds of meters.

In comparison to a modern diver’s watch, the bezel to case joint of the Borgel screw case was not screwed espe-cially tight (by fi nger pressure alone), and the winding stem and the pin-set mechanism for setting the hands were still obvious places for water to get in. However, I think these Borgel screw cases were better sealed than many people appreciate. Let’s look at these three areas of potential weakness.



1. Bezel to case jointThe need for the movement to stop rotating when

the 12 on the dial was exactly at the 12 o’clock position meant that careful adjustment of the bezel was necessary to get the bezel to screw down closely onto the case, and it is diffi cult to get this joint really tight. However, the quality of Borgel cases in terms of fi neness of fi nish can-not be doubted, and I believe that they would have left the factory with this joint well closed. The tightness of the bezel to case joint relaxes with wear and tear in the screw threads as the watch is serviced over the years, and on some watches the bezel is now positively quite loose. I believe this gives a misleading impression about how good the seal would have been when the case left the factory.2. Crown to pendant joint

When the movement is screwed fully home, the crown is pulled onto the end of the stem tube, as shown in Fig-ure 10, by the spring that keeps the outer part of the split stem engaged with the part in the movement, making quite a tight joint between the crown and the pendant or stem tube. It is rather similar in this respect to a screw-down crown, where the screw thread keeps the crown tight against the end of the stem tube. In the Borgel screw case, the spring that causes the split stem to engage with the stem in the movement also holds the crown against the end of the stem tube. This is not described in Borgel’s patent for the screw case, which describes a screw holding the split stem in place, so I don’t know whether it was an intentional design feature or a fortuitous consequence of an improvement to the patented design.3. Hand-set pushpin joint

The pushpin for the hand-set mechanism is held in place by a fl at piece of spring steel that wraps most of the way around inside the case as shown in Figure 16. The fl at piece of spring steel is wider than the pushpin, which is welded into it. Whether it was designed to or not, the fl at spring covers the inside of the hole though the case for the pin, to some extent closing it to the ingress of dust and moisture.

More waterproof than you might think

These thoughts made me realize that the Borgel screw case does provide resistance to the ingress of dust and

moisture in all three areas (the bezel, stem, and pushpin joints), as is evidenced by the very good state of preserva-tion of many movements found in Borgel cases.

So I decided to try an experiment. I took one of my Bor-gel watches (not one of my best ones for obvious reasons),

and I removed the movement. This particular watch had suffered from someone trying to lever the movement out, so there are a few gouges around the bezel, and the crown and pushpin are worn. Even though it was not in “factory fresh” condition, when I submersed it in water in a sink for a few minutes (Figure 15), it did not let in water.

Of course, this is not a scientifi c test. I’m not about to go diving in any of my Borgel screw-case watches, but it does show that the Borgel screw case, even a rather battered one like the one I test-ed, is much more “waterproof” than many people give it credit for. I am sure that a newly made case leaving the fac-tory would be quite “tight” and without doubt much superior in this regard to the standard hinged watchcases of the time.

Philadelphia ’76 and Chicago ’93

The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876 held in Philadelphia from May to November was to cel-

ebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence. There were exhibits of watches and clocks by the United States, Switzerland, France, England, and Germany.

On the face of it, the Swiss were pretty pleased with the result. Edouard Favre-Perret, the Swiss member of the international jury, wrote “Switzerland is characterized by the beauty and fi nish of the products which it presents at the Philadelphia Exhibition. It was represented in group XXV by 54 exhibitors who received 41 medals, which is 76% of the awards; it is diffi cult to ask for a better proof of the excellence of her products.” Great Britain and France were poorly represented, and there was only one German company, Lange & Söhne, of Glashütte in Saxony.12

But behind this cheerful facade, the Swiss were wor-ried. Philadelphia was the fi rst time the American watch manufacturers had presented the results of their invest-ments over the preceding 25 years in mechanical watch production, and the Swiss were shocked at what they had achieved. By using specially designed machines the American factories could produce almost every part of a watch mechanically, and those parts could be assembled into a working watch without further fi nishing. This caused two reactions in the Swiss watchmaking industry: First, they determined to emulate the American system and use machines as much as possible. Second, they rec-

Figure 15. A Borgel watch under water.

Figure 16.Pushpin detail.



ognized that the American system required a dedicated and expensive machine to make each part. This was economic where large quantities of parts were to be pro-duced, but for complicated watches, which were naturally more expensive and therefore sold in lower volumes, it was not feasible. The American factories concentrated on mass-producing simple timepiece watches. If they made more complicated watches, they reverted to simpler ma-chines and skilled watchmakers, or even brought parts in. For instance, the Waltham Watch Company was the only American company ever to make a repeating watch. These were made in very small numbers, and the repeat-ing mechanism was brought in from Switzerland.

Because the American factories could produce high- quality simple timepiece watches at prices the Swiss couldn’t match, they decided that for future exhibitions they would concentrate on areas where they had the lead. In January an invitation was received to exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the New World. The committee of the Societe Intercantonale des Industries du Jura (SIIJ), who organized the Swiss exhibition, decided that the selection of watches to be shown would exclude those that competed directly with American products, and that only watches “exclusively of superior quality” and “with superior quality movements and the best artistically designed cases” would be exhib-ited. François Borgel was chosen to be one of the 34 Swiss exhibitors.13

The Committee on Awards of the exhibition recorded the following comments about Borgel’s exhibition:

F. Borgel, Geneva, had something new in his wa-terproof cases made in a single piece without hinges; many of them were made of oxidized steel inlaid with gold. A number of the smallest watches made, beautifully decorated with diamonds and enamels, in small globes, bracelets, and chatelaines were very attractive and showed great skill in this most delicate department of watchmaking.14

The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review report of the exhibition stated “Francois Borgel shows the latest novelty in economical and waterproof watch cases. These are made in a single piece ... to screw without a hinge and are patented in all countries. The line is shown largely in oxidized steel with inlaid gold ornaments. One has the face of the Pope, another that of President Carnot. A line of oxidized steel and gold watch bracelets is also shown.”15

The advertisement reproduced in Figure 17 was pub-lished in the trade journal La Fédération Horlogère Suisse in 1894. In it Borgel recorded a “Great success” at the Chi-cago exhibition and that he was awarded a medal and diploma for his exhibit, recognizing the impermeability, elegance, strength, and economy of his watchcases.

The two notices at the bottom of the advertisement informed watch manufacturers that Borgel had signed up Dubail, Monnin, Frossard & Co. of Porrentruy, and Fab-

rique de Fontainemelon, a very large maker of mass-pro-duced ébauches (bare movements), to make movements especially designed to fi t into Borgel screw cases. This meant supplying their movements with the short split winding stem and pin-set hand-setting mechanism ready to drop straight into the carrier ring of a Borgel case. All the “manufacturer” needed to assemble complete watch-es were the dial and hands!

Dubail, Monnin, Frossard & Cie was founded in Por-rentruy in 1873. It was the fi rst Swiss watch company to register the design of a movement caliber. The company registered a trademark of a phoenix rising from a fi re (fi rst

Figure 17. Borgel advertisement.



spelled “Phönix” then “Phenix”) in 1887. The Borgel pocket watch shown in Figure 13 has a movement made by this company. The movement also bears the Swiss Patent No. CH 7250, which was granted to Dubail, Mon-nin, Frossard & Cie in November 1893—the same year as the Columbian Exposition—which is how I discovered who made the movement.

Fabrique d’Horlogerie Fontainemelon (FHF) was es-tablished in 1793 by Isaac and David Benguerel-dit-Perrenoud, with Julien and François Humbert-Droz, to supply Swiss manufacturers with the large volumes of ébauches they required. It was the fi rst step toward large-scale mechanized manufacture of Swiss watch move-ments. In 1879 the Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie said in a report that in the preceding 40 years the Fontainemelon factory, along with Japy Frères in Beaucort, France, had supplied nearly all the ébauches used in the cantons of Neuchatel and Berne.16 In 1880 the company employed 400 workers and produced 240,000 ébauches a year. In 1926 FHF merged with AD Michel SA of Grenchen and A Schild SA, also of Grenchen, to form Ébauches SA. At the time these three factories manufactured more than 75 percent of all Swiss ébauches. Ébauches SA eventually became ETA, the movement maker now part of Swatch Group SA.

1903: A “New” Borgel Screw CaseIn 1903 François Borgel patented a three-piece screw

watchcase. The Swiss patent number was CH 28389, which was registered on June 12, 1903. The drawing in the patent is not very clear, but the advertisement in Fig-ure 18, which appeared in 1905 in La Fédération Horlogère Suisse, is a good illustration of the design.11 The move-ment is carried in an externally threaded carrier ring, very similar to the carrier ring of the one-piece Borgel case. Onto this carrier ring is screwed the middle part of the case, and then the bezel and case back are screwed onto the threaded parts of the ring that remain protrud-ing after the middle part is screwed on. These three-piece Borgel screw cases are very rare; I have only ever seen two: a pocket watch and a wristwatch dated 1916.

The address of the factory and offi ce [usine et bureau] is now given as 6 Rue de Saint-Jean, Geneva, a suburban area about one mile from the Place Cornavin, between railway lines to the north and the banks of the Rhone River. Borgel must have relocated there from the old Tif-fany factory at 17 Place Cornavin, probably when Tiffa-ny’s lease on the building expired. In 1894 an announce-ment of Borgel’s Patent No. CH 8232 gave his address as 6 Rue de Saint-Jean, so Tiffany probably had a 20-year lease on the building, which would have expired in 1892.

It is interesting to note that Borgel calls this a “three-piece” case and his earlier design a “one-piece” case. Which particular pieces he is counting is not clear. The three pieces could be the middle part, back, and bezel, but then the one-piece case has a back/middle piece and

a bezel. If you don’t count the bezel of the one-piece case, then the three-piece case has a separate back and middle part. But that is only two pieces. Perhaps you count the carrier ring as the third piece. But the one-piece case also has a separate carrier ring . . . oh well, at least Monsieur Borgel knew what he meant!

From Pocket Watch to Wristwatch

Almost as soon as spring-driven watches became small enough to be worn on the person, they were adapted

as brooches and items of jewelry and also worn on the wrist. But this was strictly a fashion for the ladies. Wrist-watches became very popular among fox-hunting ladies in England in the 1870s, but fashion dictated that men carried pocket watches.

This began to change with the needs of the military for the precise timing of maneuvers, combined with the dif-fi culty of using a pocket watch during such maneuvers. Faced with the problem of pulling out a pocket watch to check the time or using one hand to hold the watch visible as the vital last few seconds ticked by, while hold-ing the horse’s reins with the other, and yet still needing

Figure 18. Borgel three-piece case.



to wield a pistol, offi cers soon recognized the utility of strapping a watch to the wrist. Thus began the development of the man’s wrist-watch. At fi rst, pocket watches were adapted by being placed in leather cups with wrist straps, which allowed them to be worn on the wrist during maneuvers, but were returned to the pocket when in civilian attire. Figure 19 shows a small Borgel pocket watch in one of these wrist straps.

Early wristwatches, or pocket watches in wrist straps, were often called “wristlets.” One of the confl icts in which such wristlets played an important role was the second Boer War, fought between the British Army and descendants of Dutch settlers called Boers (farmers) between 1899 and 1902 in South Africa. The Boers oper-ated as self-organizing commando units—they were used to life in the saddle and to hunting with a rifl e, and they knew the terrain and were highly motivated. Against such a highly mobile adversary, British offi cers were forced to devel-op the technique of using precision timing to coordinate troop movements and synchronize attacks against the Boers’ positions.

An advertisement for a military pocket watch called “The Company’s ‘Service’ Watch” (Figure 20) appeared in the Goldsmiths & Sil-versmiths 1901 Watch and Clock Catalogue.17

The watch in question, as can be seen from the advertisement, was a Borgel screw-cased pocket watch, described in the catalog as “The most reliable timekeeper in the World for Gentlemen going on Active Service or for rough wear.” The robustness of the Borgel case was evident in this claim.

The “UNSOLICITED TESTIMONIAL” at the bottom of the advertisement, dated June 7, 1900, stated, “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 captain was following the fashion of normally carrying a pocket watch, but strapping it to his wrist while on active service. The watch shown at center top in the advertisement at two pounds and ten shillings is in an oxidized steel case, which is the type the captain was wearing and which rusted considerably. The silver watch at bot-tom left is an extra pound—three pounds and ten shillings—and the one on the right in the 18 carat gold case is a rather steep 12 pounds.

Borgel’s First Wristwatches

Manufacturers noted this demand for watches to be worn on the wrist and started producing wrist-

watches for this purpose. These were initially based on smaller movements originally designed for ladies’ pocket watches, with the cases simply adapted with fi xed loops of wire, called wire lugs, to take a leather strap. Although taken up by aviators and automobilists as well as military men, these wristwatches did not fi nd favor with the gen-eral public. They were thought too small to keep accurate time, too vulnerable to damage or dust and water, and simply not the fashionable thing for a man to wear.

The advertisement in Figure 21 appeared in a 1912 is-sue of Revue Internationale de l’Horlogerie.18 In it Borgel was still promoting his “new” three-piece screw case. This ad was very similar to an ad published in 1908, but in the 1912 advertisement shown here there is a new twist. On the left side below the three-piece case is the familiar one-piece pocket watchcase, but to the right of this is shown an example of Boîtes pour Bracelets, a watchcase that was adapted with wire lugs to take a “bracelet” and be worn as a wristwatch.

The advertisement also stated that this wristwatch case design had been “specifi cally requested by motorists and members of the English and colonial army.”

Figure 19. Pocket watch in wrist strap.

Figure 20, left. Goldsmiths & Silversmiths advertisement.



The bottom of the ad stated Aucune boîte, à ce jour, n’a été plus pratique, solide et élégante; se fait en or, tour titres, argent, acier, plaqué or et galonné. [No case, to date, has been more practi-cal, strong and elegant; it is made in gold, all grades, silver, steel, gold plate and galonné.] (Galonne is silver that has been mechanically gold plated, as opposed to electroplated or gold fi lled. It apparently wore off very easily.)

Note also the address to-ward the top of the ad: Usine et Bureau à St-Jean 78 [Factory and Offi ce 78 Rue de St-Jean]. The business had relocated yet again, from number 6 to num-ber 78 Rue de St-Jean, presum-ably because of further expan-sion. Paradoxically, the new address was considerably closer to the center of the city than the previous number 6 Rue de St-Jean, according to Google maps. Perhaps it was a more prestigious location and a larger factory, or the street might simply have been renumbered.

Figure 22 shows a Borgel-cased wristwatch, with the movement unscrewed from the case. The threaded carri-er ring can be seen below the bezel with two holes where the winding stem and the pin set for the hands engage with the movement.

An unusual feature of Borgel wristwatches is that they have a tube projecting from the case with the winding crown mounted on the end of it. This is a carryover from the pocket watch, where the tube is called the pendant. On a pocket watch the pendant carries the bow (ring) to which is attached a chain or leather fob, and the watch hangs down from this when it is withdrawn from a waist-coat pocket, hence the name pendant. Wristwatches don’t have a bow, for obvious reasons, and so do not usu-ally have a pendant. Normally, the winding stem simply passes through a hole in the wall of the case, with the crown mounted directly onto the end of it. But in a Borgel watchcase, a pendant (pocket watch) or stem tube (wristwatch) is required to accommo-date the spring and split stem.

Even for wristwatches without any trace of a pendant or stem tube, the term pendant is sometimes used in-stead of the term crown, causing great confusion for those not familiar with pocket watches. For instance, tim-ing trials of wristwatches often refer

to positions such as “pendant up” and “pendant down” as a carryover from timing pocket watches.

At the time Borgel invented his screw case around 1890, the wristwatch was a novelty item worn by ladies; men car-ried pocket watches tucked safely in waistcoat pockets. The working environment for such a pocket watch is rela-tively benign, tucked away in its warm dry pocket and only pulled to the outside world occasionally when its owner wanted to know the time. For this environment the dust and moisture resistance of the Bor-gel case was probably an over-kill. But when the wristwatch came into fashion, a need for

better protection arose because of the vulnerable position of the watch at the end of the wearer’s arm, where it was exposed to dust and to splashes every time the wearer washed his hands. The Borgel case offered the movement a lot better protection than the ordinary watchcases of the time, and Borgel found that as sales of wristwatches started to take off, he had the right product to answer the demand.

Stauffer, IWC, and Borgel

The London fi rm of Stauffer & Co. was formed in the middle part of the nineteenth century, initially to

import watches made by the Swiss watchmaking fi rm of Stauffer, Son & Co. at its factory in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The Swiss parent fi rm of Stauffer, Son & Co. was estab-lished for watch manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1830. Pritchard recorded that by the 1860s Stauffer, Son & Co. had established the London branch, Stauffer & Co., to import watches to Britain. This fi rm was a trading part-

nership between Jules Stauffer and Francis Claude located at 12 Old Jew-ry Chambers, London.19 Pritchard did not record exactly when this branch was established.

Family history records show that Jules Stauffer (1809-1884), a Swiss national, married Anne Blewitt from Bristol in the St. Giles district of London on December 6, 1837. The 1851 Census shows Jules and Anne Stauffer living at Courland House, Wandsworth Road, Clapham, an af-fl uent district in southwest London, England. Jules was age 42, and his

Figure 21. Advertisement with wristwatch.

Figure 22. Borgel wristwatch.



occupation was described as a Watch Manufacturer born in Switzerland. The family had three children aged 7, 5, and 3, and a servant. Francis Claude (1826-?), also a Swiss national, married Mary Anne Hewitt from Bury in Lan-cashire on September 29, 1847. Although Pritchard said the London fi rm was established “by the 1860s,” these facts indicate that Jules Stauffer and Francis Claude were residents in London well before this date, so Stauffer & Co. was certainly established a lot earlier than 1860, pos-sibly even before Jules Stauffer’s marriage in 1837 and therefore not long after the Swiss parent company was founded. It was presumably set up and called “Stauffer & Co.” by Jules Stauffer, who is most likely the son referred to in the name of the Swiss parent fi rm, “Stauffer, Son & Co.” The name Stauffer & Co. was the legal title of the British fi rm, but it often used the name Stauffer, Son & Co. in advertising and correspondence.

Watches imported by Stauffer & Co. were sold on to retailers in the United Kingdom and across the Brit-ish Empire. When Jules Stauffer retired, Charles Nicolet (1853-1940), a Swiss national, became a partner in the fi rm. In 1874 Claude retired and Nicolet took over complete control of the London fi rm. It appears that some time later Nicolet also took control of the Swiss parent fi rm, which from at least 1892 was registered as Nicolet Fils & Cie. From this point on, the history of the Stauffer and Nicolet fi rms became completely entwined. I suspect that the Stauffer line had terminated and Nicolet and his son were keeping the Stauffer name going purely because it had become widely recognized, but I have not been able to fi nd any genealogical evidence to support this theory.

Charles Nicolet’s initials “CN” were registered with the Assay Offi ce on March 1, 1877, as a sponsor’s mark (the “sponsor” is someone in the United Kingdom, usually an importer, who is registered at an Assay offi ce to send items for assay; his registered mark is struck on each item for identifi cation purposes. The sponsor’s mark is used on imported items instead of the maker’s mark found on items manufactured in the United Kingdom), and the initials “CN” appear with the hallmarks in watches im-ported by Stauffer & Co. Evidently, the output of watches from the Stauffer factory was not suffi cient to keep up with demand, because Stauffer & Co. also sourced watch-es from a number of other Swiss manufacturers, among them the International Watch Co. of Schaffhausen.

IWC supplied watches and movements to Stauffer & Co. from 1894. From 1898 the movements of these bore the mark “S&Co.” under a crown inside an oval, together with the word “Peerless.” These were both Stauffer trade-

marks; the “S & Co.” mark beneath 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 fi nding S & Co. and Peerless on a movement is no guarantee that it is an IWC movement, because Stauffer & Co. also sourced movements from other mak-ers, and “S&Co.” under a crown inside an oval and “Peer-less” are found on these non-IWC movements.

IWC supplied both complete watches and bare (un-cased) movements to Stauffer & Co. Some complete watches were supplied by IWC in Borgel cases, and many of the bare movements supplied to Stauffer by IWC were also put into Borgel cases. IWC has very good archives go-ing back to 1886 that record the case number, case style, case material, movement number, caliber designation, size and height, date of sale, and original customer for every watch it supplied. For a fee IWC will produce an “extract from the archives” for any watch supplied com-plete by IWC.

Figure 23 shows one of my pocket watches that is in an oxidized steel Borgel case. An extract from the IWC ar-chives shows that this watch was supplied to Stauffer, Son & Co., London, in 1908, which is useful because of course the steel case is not hallmarked. The dial bears the retailer’s name, Hamilton and Inches of Edinburgh, founded in 1866 by Robert Kirk. Inches and his un-cle, James Hamilton, Scotland’s leading jeweler and Royal War-rant holder since 1887, are still going strong today. It was the practice at the time in the Unit-

ed Kingdom that the retailer’s name appeared on the dial, rather than the maker’s. Until the 1920s the only form of “branding” was the name of the jeweler, who would be a known and trusted business in his city or town. The name was painted onto the dial only after the enamel had been fi red, so it was not very permanent and often wore off as on my watch.

The fact that the case number and details of my watch are recorded in the IWC archives shows that the watch was supplied complete by IWC. David Seyffer, the cura-tor of the IWC Museum, explained it to me like this: “In our records every IWC watch has got his case number and number of the movement. Providing an abstract, we check the numbers in the records of cases and move-ments. If the IWC watch was sold with these two num-bers, then it is an original IWC watch and you will receive an abstract. Then we know that the case—even if it was made by a supplier like Borgel—was polished, decorated in Schaffhausen, and our watchmakers encased the IWC movement right here.”

Figure 23. A steel-cased Borgel pocket watch.



With one exception, the only Borgel watches that I have seen to date that have been confi rmed by IWC as supplied to Stauffer & Co. complete are pocket watches, but not all pocket watches with IWC movements were supplied to Stauffer & Co. complete. I also have an IWC movement in a silver pocket watch, hallmarked 1907/8, very similar to my steel IWC pocket watch, but for this one I cannot get an abstract from the IWC archives be-cause the movement was supplied to Stauffer & Co. un-cased. Although a detailed study of watchcases supplied to IWC by Borgel has not been carried out, David Seyffer told me that a brief review of the IWC archives indicated that between 1900 and 1910 Borgel was an important supplier of watchcases to IWC.

Borgel wristwatches with IWC movements supplied to Stauffer are seen quite regularly, such as my 18-carat gold watch shown in Figure 2, but except for one watch discussed below, all the IWC movements in Borgel wrist-watches I have seen to date were supplied to Stauffer & Co. by IWC as bare movements. This change, from Bor-gel supplying cases to IWC and IWC supplying complete watches to Stauffer & Co., to IWC supplying only bare movements and Stauffer & Co. getting them fi tted with dials, hands, and cases is curious. It would not have been in IWC’s economic favor to work like this; perhaps they did not have a choice. Before World War I Stauffer & Co. was supplying watches to the massive British Empire mar-ket and was sourcing watches from many suppliers and must have had great purchasing power.

The Earliest Known Borgel Wristwatch?The earliest Borgel

wristwatch that I have seen is the watch with an IWC movement shown in Figure 24. The move-ment (Figure 25) is an IWC caliber 64 savon-nette. The movement is stamped S&Co. be-neath a crown in an oval cameo, the trademark of Stauffer & Co., London, and marked “Peerless,” also a Stauffer trade-mark.

IWC has told me that the serial numbers of both the case and the movement correspond to a record in their archives, showing that the watch was made by IWC in 1906 and sold complete to Stauffer Son & Co., London, on January 9, 1907, noting that the case was “avec anses” - “with handles,” the Swiss/French term in those days for the lugs or loops to take the strap of a wristwatch. The order from IWC to Borgel to supply the case was made on September 15, 1906. Figure 26 shows an extract from the IWC archives confi rming that the watch was supplied

complete by IWC. The case is described as a “lépine” even though the movement is a sa-vonnette. This is be-cause at the time open-faced pocket watches had lépine movements (crown at 12 o’clock and small seconds at 6 o’clock) whereas an open-faced wristwatch needs a savonnette movement (usually used in hunter watch-es with metal lids) so that the crown is at 3 o’clock and the small seconds at 6 o’clock. The IWC record com-piler was not familiar with this arrangement for wristwatches.

The Borgel case is unusual for a watch supplied to Stauffer London because it doesn’t carry any hall-marks, just the FB-key trademark and “Brevet 4001,” so it couldn’t have been retailed in the United Kingdom. The IWC records indicate that it was a “one off” rather than one of a batch. It may have been supplied to Stauffer as a prototype and, as it came to me from Swit-zerland, may have never left the country before.

Dimier Frères & Cie and Borgel

The legend “Deposé No. 9846” is sometimes seen on the back of Borgel wristwatch cases (and some other

early wristwatches). In 1903 the fi rm of Dimier Frères & Cie made an attempt to monopolize the nascent wrist-watch market. Deposé is shorthand for Modèle deposé, which means “registered design.” Copyright exists for designs whether they are registered or not, but it can be diffi cult to prove without evidence of the date the item was designed or made; hence, an entry in the register is a useful offi cial record.

Figure 27 on the next page shows the offi cial Swiss register entry for Modèle deposé No. 9846 dated July 29, 1903. As you can see, it is pretty short on description com-pared to a patent: it simply says Montre à bracelet-courroieor “Wristwatch belt” and shows a picture of the design to be protected. The design is clearly that of a wristwatch strap or band, and a rather odd strap it is, too. Its main novel features are the roundish part that covers the back of the watch and the cover for the buckle. It appears that

Figure 24. IWC Borgel wristwatch.

Figure 25. Movement of watch shown in Figure 25.

Figure 26. IWC extract.



it would have to be at least partially stitched after fi tting to the watch, and I cannot imagine such a strap being a big seller.

The announcement shown in Figure 28 was published in La Fédération Horlogère Suisse in October 1907.11 “To avoid trouble and misunderstandings, we inform Gentle-men makers of watch cases of gold, silver and metal, and Gentlemen watch manufacturers from Switzerland, the curved handles for wristwatches are registered in our de-sign No. 9846 dated July 29, 1903. We will pursue anyone who manufacture these watches with handles, without having previously made arrangements for a royalty to be paid to us, and that has not sent his watch case to our fi rm in La Chaux-de-Fonds to stamp our registered trade-mark in the case back.”

What is going on here? The registered design has ab-solutely nothing whatsoever to do with the “curved han-dles” (wire lugs) described in the 1907 announcement. Was Dimier Frères trying to pretend it was something that it was not, hoping that no one would be bothered to go to the Intellectual Property Offi ce and actually

look up the register entry? It is diffi -cult to believe that someone would start handing over royalty fees in exchange for having “Deposé Nº 9846” stamped in their watchcases without seeing pretty strong evi-dence that they actually needed to. The Borgel Company, from its advertisements, was especially well versed in protecting its designs through patents and threatening to sue anyone who counterfeited. Per-haps there was some cooperation between Borgel and Dimier Frères; certainly Borgel supplied them with watchcases as we will see in the next section.

Stem-Set Borgel Watches

Although the split-stem and pin-set arrangement for winding and setting the hands was perfectly satisfac-

tory, and in fact continued to be used for many years, a method of winding the watch and setting the hands using only the crown, called stem winding and setting, had been invented in 1845 by Adrien Philippe of Patek Philippe, which made the separate pin-set look a little old fashioned. It was not easy to design a Borgel watch with stem winding and setting, but in 1894 François Borgel was granted Swiss Patent CH 8232 Montre perfectionnée à boîte vissée et tige brisée [Improved watch with screw case and split stem], which described a Borgel screw case with stem winding and setting. Figure 29 shows two of the drawings from the patent.

Figure 27. Modele depose No. 9846.

Figure 28. Notice in La Federation Horlogere Suisse.

Figure 29. Borgel stem-set patent.



The watch movement contains a pos-itive set “keyless work,” the mechanism that shifts from winding to hand set-ting when the stem is pulled out, but the stem is split as in a normal Borgel screw case and ends in a head at F. The head F of the stem is held by clamp B, which is attached to the crown A. Clamp B is made of spring steel and its jaws nor-mally spring apart. It is externally ta-pered and is held closed, gripping the head F of the stem, by sleeve C, which is tapered internally. Sleeve C is connected by the rods D to plunger E, which sits in a recess in the crown. As shown in the diagram on the left of the fi gure, the stem is in the winding position. If the crown is withdrawn to the hand-setting position, clamp B ensures that the stem in the movement is also drawn out, and the keyless work is put into the hand-setting position. Returning the crown to its normal place puts the keyless work back into the winding position.

When the movement is to be removed from the case, groove e around the top of plunger E is gripped with the fi nger nails, and plunger E is withdrawn from the crown, as shown in the diagram on the right of the fi gure. This withdraws the internally tapered sleeve C from the clamp B, allowing the jaws of B to spring apart and release the head F of the stem. Thus uncoupled from the internal stem, the crown can be pulled out, and clamp B will be withdrawn from the movement, allowing it to turn freely so that it can be unscrewed from the case.

I have never seen a Borgel watch with this particular stem-wind and stem-set arrangement, and the reason is pretty obvious when you consider that the whole mecha-nism would have to fi t within the crown and stem tube, which are only a few millimeters across; the parts would be minute. Although the Swiss watch industry was capable of making parts on such a small scale, this applied to only a few specifi c parts of a watch mechanism, and the tech-niques and tools for making these minute parts had been

developed over many years—tools and techniques that were used by special-ists who spent their whole working life learning fi rst how to make one spe-cifi c part and then making it over and over again. The Swiss watch industry at the end of the nineteenth century was not capable of general purpose mi-cromachining—unlike today, with its computer-controlled precision lathes and milling machines—and I think the design defi ned in this patent was fi ne in theory but impossible to make at the time.

However, the Borgel watch shown in Figure 30 does not have a pin set to set the hands and must be stem-wound and stem-set, so somebody must have succeeded in producing a mechanism that works with the Borgel case. The 15-jewel Swiss lever movement bears the initials D.F. & C in an oval, which Pritchard confi rms was regis-tered to Dimier Frères & Cie in 1896.19 The fi rm was to have been founded as Georges Dimier SA in La Chaux-de-Fonds in the mid-nineteenth century and became Dimier Frères & Cie when the father Georges died and his sons took over the company.

The clues to the working of the mechanism are con-tained in the case back. There are London import hall-marks for silver with the date letter “b” for 1917/18, and the sponsor’s mark of “DBS,” which Priestley reveals was registered from 1907 to George & Edward Dimier of Dim-ier Brothers & Co., Watch Importers of 46 Cannon Street, London.20 There is also a reference in the case back to a Swiss Patent No. CH 69988. This patent was registered by Dimier Frères & Cie and Alfred Roth on December 16, 1914, and granted on January 3, 1916.

The patent describes a way of applying stem setting to a Borgel-cased watch. The patent does not actually men-tion Borgel cases specifi cally; it merely says that the pat-ent is “applicable to watches with hermetically closed cas-es for which it is necessary to avoid a lateral constraint,” but we know what this means!

The diagrams from the patent in Figure 31 (next page) show how this was achieved. The original fi gure was rather hard to understand, so I have moved its elements around to juxtapose them more logically without alter-ing them in any way. The patent shows the split stem we would expect to fi nd in a Borgel watch, but this one has three positions: the normal one with the crown against the case, a middle position with the crown and split stem partly withdrawn, and the fully withdrawn position to enable the movement to be unscrewed from or screwed into the case.

Figure 30. Stem-set Borgel watch.

Don’t confuse The Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Company with The Goldsmiths’ Company, the London Guild formed in 1300 to test the quality of gold and silver items, and whose Guild hall gave us the term “hallmark” (because that was where London craftsmen were required to bring their work assaying and marking. The Goldsmiths’ Company still runs the London Assay Offi ce today, over 700 years after its foundation.



The split stem and crown are held in these three posi-tions by the spring e, which engages with grooves on the shaped split stem f. In Fig. 1 the split stem f is held in engagement with the movement g. In Fig. 2 the stem is held in the middle position by the spring e engaging a different groove in the shaped stem. And fi nally in Fig. 3 the split stem is fully withdrawn. The spring e does not positively locate the split stem in this position because it is only required occasionally when the movement is to be unscrewed from or screwed into the case, and the designers obviously decided that the watchmaker could simply hold onto the crown as he screwed or unscrewed the movement, the same as he would do for a conven-tional Borgel case.

So how does the winding and hand setting work? The movement uses a type of keyless work called “negative set.” This type of keyless work is rare in Swiss watches but very common in nineteenth-century American pocket watches, where the movement and case were often se-lected separately by the customer and the retailer would fi t the movement into the case. The secret of the negative set movement is that the keyless work is spring loaded so that when the movement is out of the case it is in the hand-setting position. To put it into the “normal” wind-ing position, the stem must press the keyless work in to-ward the center of the movement, against the action of the spring. This is what is happening in Fig. 1 of the pat-ent. The split stem f and the element g, which represents the part of the stem in the movement, are held by the spring e in the winding position, against the pressure of the spring in the keyless work. In Fig. 2 of the patent the draftsman has made a mistake. The part of the stem g

should have, under pressure from the spring in the keyless work, followed the split stem f as it was withdrawn to the middle position, putting the keyless work into the hand-setting posi-tion. The draftsman probably made this simple mistake because negative-set mechanisms were rare in Switzerland.

American negative-set stem-wind and stem-set pocket watches usually used a sleeve made of spring steel set in the watch pendant to achieve the same function. The sleeve has four slots cut into it to form spring “fi ngers” and it tapers so that it grips the stem. The sleeve holds the stem in either the normal winding position or the hand-setting position. The stem has separate grooves with tapered sides for those positions, and pulling or pushing on the crown moves the stem between the two positions, the sleeve being sprung out by the tapers on the side of the groove, springing back into the next groove to lock the stem in position. The Dimier Frères patent design uses a stem with grooves similar to the American design, but it uses the spring e to hold the stem. This was probably to make

the design suffi ciently compact for a wristwatch case, the American design needing the large pendant of a pocket watch to accommodate it. This spring is also the Achil-les heel of the Dimier Frères design, being so small and without adequate provision for lubrication that it wears quickly.

Borgel probably licensed this design from Dimier Frères & Cie. My watch shown in Figure 30 has the Borgel FB-key trademark as well as the “DBS” of Dimier Broth-ers & Co., but it could conceivably have been a one-off or limited production made to Dimier’s orders. However, Longines watches are sometimes also seen in Borgel cases like this without the pin-set push-piece for hand setting, the case marked with the Borgel FB-key trademark.

Patek Philippe and Borgel

Patek Philippe is one of the best known watch brands in the world today. It has been making the fi nest quality

beautiful watches in Geneva since the fi rm was founded in 1839 by Antoine Norbert de Patek. In 1845 Jean-Adrien Philippe, the inventor of stem winding, joined the com-pany and the name was changed to Patek & Co. Philippe obviously made a good impression because in 1851 the name was changed to Patek Philippe & Co.

Patek Philippe records show the production of a wa-terproof watch with a Borgel screw case in early 1913.18 It was a pocket watch, described in the records as 19’’’ Extra Système à vis, bassine pincée, imperméable, or vert [19 lignes size, extra adjustments, screw case, fl attened basin shape, waterproof, in green gold]. I do not know how many of this type of watch with Borgel cases were made, and Patek Philippe never communicates about rarity and quantity.

Figure 31. Patent CH 69988.



Longines and Borgel

Longines’ watchmaking origins began in 1832 in Saint-Imier, Switzerland. In 1866 some land called les

longines [the long meadows] was purchased and a watch factory was built, production started in 1877 of watches by machinery on the gauged and interchangeable prin-ciple, and the Longines Watches brand was born. Borgel pocket and wristwatches are often seen with Longines movements, and one of the last mentions of the Borgel patent screw case is in a 1939 Longines catalog.1 It is clear that Borgel was an important supplier to Longines for many years.

Most Longines Borgel cases are of the standard screw type with pin-set hand setting and split winding stem and coin edge milling around the bezel to grip while un-screwing. However, Longines wristwatches, rather than having fi xed wire lugs, have hinged or articulated lugs, which are very distinctive. A Longines Borgel watch with these swinging lugs is shown in Figure 32. These cus-tom lugs were a “special order” on the Borgel factory by Longines, which would probably only have been consid-ered for big customers; smaller customers would have tak-en the standard product. These hinged lugs were used on Longines watches in ordinary, not Borgel, cases and are quite unique to Longines. If you see a Borgel-cased watch with this type of swinging lug, you can be pretty sure that it contains a Longines movement, even if the move-

ment is not marked Longines.

Some Longines Borgel screw cas-es, in addition to the swinging lugs, have smooth be-zels, without the coin edge milling, which is rather un-usual; I have seen only Borgel screw cases with smooth bezels with Longines move-ments, so again I

assume that these were specially made just for Longines. If you have one of these cases (or any other screw case) and fi nd the bezel diffi cult to turn because of the lack of grip, try using a watchmaker’s “sticky ball” because it give a surprising amount of grip.

The London fi rm of Baume & Company was an agent for Longines for the United Kingdom and all of the Brit-ish Commonwealth. Otherwise unmarked Longines watches from the early twentieth century often (always?) bear the mark “B & Co.” for Baume & Co. next to the Longines movement caliber (e.g., “13.34,” “13.82,” etc.) number under the balance wheel; these marks are some-times diffi cult to see, so use a lens to look at the plate

underneath the balance wheel. Watches with silver and gold cases assayed in the United Kingdom bear the spon-sor’s mark “AB,” the initials of Arthur Baume, as part of the hallmark..

Dennis Harris wrote that a 1939 Longines catalog con-tained an illustration of a watch in the early style Borgel one-piece screw case,1 but I have never actually seen a Borgel screw case watch with a hallmark date as late as this, which begs the question, what was the last Borgel screw case to be made?1 Looking through my collection, they are mainly dated around the time of World War I, but that is the period I am most interested in so it’s hardly surprising. If you have a Borgel screw case watch with a hallmark in the late 1920s or 1930s, please let me know.

Other Case Types Made by Borgel

Borgel’s screw case was very successful and was made until the 1930s, as evidenced by the 1939 Longines

catalogue advertising a wristwatch in a Borgel screw case. However, other case designs were also manufactured by the Borgel company alongside the screw case. These oth-er cases were made either because they were cheaper, or because of a certain manufacturer’s preference for a par-ticular case design. These cases were obviously stamped with the Borgel FB-key trademark and so get described as Borgel cases even though they were not designed by Bor-gel. These non-Borgel cases made by the Borgel company alongside, not superseding, the original Borgel screw case are, broadly, as follows:• Swing-ring case designed and patented in 1879 by Ezra

Fitch.• One-piece case with a screw-on bezel designed and pat-

ented in 1920 by Charles Rothen.• Hermetic double case designed and patented in 1921 by

Jean Finger• One-piece case with screw-on bezel designed and pat-

ented in 1931 by 1931 by Schwob Frères & Cie SA.In the late 1920s and early 1930s, new designs of screw

case were developed to supersede the original Borgel screw case. Again, these cases were obviously stamped with the Borgel FB-key trademark, although by then the company had changed its name. These cases gradually superseded the original Borgel screw case and were:• One-piece case where movement in threaded carrier

ring screws in from the back, and the back screws on.• One-piece case with movement in plain carrier ring,

and the back with milled edge screws into case.• One-piece case with movement in plain carrier ring,

and the back with 10 decagonal fl ats screws into case.I describe each of these case types in more detail in

later parts of this article.

Francis BaumgartnerIn their book, The Best of Time: Rolex Wristwatches:

An Unauthorized History, Jeffrey Hess and James Dowl-ing write “Francis Baumgartner is one of the greatest of all the Swiss case making concerns ... In the early 1920s

Figure 32. Longines Borgel.



François Borgel Swiss PatentsDate Number Title Translation

December 3, 1888 CH 16 Nouvelle composition des plaques métalliques New composition of the metal plates servant à la fabrication des boîtes de montres, used in the manufacture of watchcases, médaillons et autres bijoux. lockets, and other jewelry.

March 28, 1889 CH 9 (E) Nouvelle composition des plaques métalliques (Development of Patent No. CH 16) servant à la fabrication des boîtes de montres, médaillons et autres bijoux. October 8, 1891 CH 4041 Montre avec boîte à fond fi xeet raquette Watchcase with fi xed bottom and renversée. reversed regulator.

October 28, 1891 CH 4001 Nouvelle boîte de montre. New watchcase

November 12, 1891 CH 4145 Boîte de montre perfectionnée Improved watchcase

April 20, 1894 CH 8232 Montre perfectionnée à boîte vissée et tige Improved screwed watchcase with split brisée. stem.

June 25, 1895 CH 10412 Moteur à ressort pour vélocipèdes. Spring engine for bicycles

June 12, 1903 CH 28389 Boîte de montre perfectionnée. Improved watchcase.

July 23, 1910 CH 53105 Dispositif de fi xation de pendant aux boîtes Method of fi xing pendants to de montres-calottes. watchcases

Baumgartner began to construct cases made to the pat-ent of Borgel.” There never was a Swiss watchcase maker called Francis Baumgartner. The identities of two real case-makers, François Borgel and Frédéric Baumgartner appear to have been confl ated, in the process “François” turn-ing into the Anglicized “Francis.” I have discussed this with James Dowling and he agrees that this is broadly what happened. The only user of the FB-key trademark, and maker of Borgel cases, was the Borgel company, later owned by the Taubert family.

References 1. Dennis Harris, “François Borgel Watch Case Maker 1856-

1912,” Horological Journal (November 1997): 373-375. 2. Archives de l’Horlogerie, Marques de fabrique et de commerce

Suisse Enregistrés par le Bureau fédéral à Berne. 3. Britten’s Watch & Clock Maker’s Handbook Dictionary and

Guide, 16th edition (London: Eyre Methuen Ltd., 1978): 334.4. V&A Jewellery Gallery-Making a Watchcase, http://www.

youtube.com/watch?v=PhW33Or3rt0. 5. Eugene Jacquet and Alfred Chapuis, Technique and History

of the Swiss Watch, revised edition (Worthing, West Sussex, United Kingdom: Littlehampton Book Services Ltd., Septem-ber 25, 1970): plate 52.

6. The Journal de Genève, a daily newspaper published from January 6, 1826, to February 28, 1998.

7. The Horological Journal (February 1879): 838. Indicateur Davoine et Indicateur Général de l’Horlogerie Suisse

et régions limitrophes, annual publication-year as indicated, Go-gler Publicité.

9. Julien John Stanislous Tripplin, “Watch and clock mak-ing in 1889,” an account of the exhibits in the horological sec-tion of the French International Exhibition (London: Crosby Lockwood, 1890): 112

10. Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie et de la Bijouterie. 11. La Fédération Horlogère Suisse, journal of the Swiss Cham-

ber of Watchmaking, etc. 12. “Philadelphia Exhibition 1876. Report Presented to The

Federal High Council on the Horology Industry.” E Favre-Perret, Member of the International Jury. Winterthur: J. West-fehling, 1877.

13. “Minutes of the board of the Societe Intercantonale des Industries du Jura (SIIJ),” January 18, 1892. Musée Internation-al d’Horlogerie (MIH) quoted by Pierre-Yves Donzé in History

of the Swiss Watch Industry.14. “World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Ill., 1893,”

Volume 2: World’s Columbian Commission Committee on Awards. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Offi ce, 1901: 905.

15. The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review, Jewelers’ Circular Pub. Co. (August 9, 1893).

16. “L’Industrie Horlogère Suisse,” Journal Suisse d’Horlogerie et de la Bijouterie, 1879.

17. Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Company Ltd., London, Watch and Clock Catalogue, 1901.

18. Revue Internationale de l’Horlogerie.19. Kathleen H. Pritchard, Swiss Timepiece Makers 1775-1975,

vol. 2 (West Kennebunk: Phoenix Publishing, 1998): S-93.20. Philip Priestley, Watch Case Makers of England, 1720-

1920, NAWCC Bulletin Supplement No. 20 (Spring 1994).

AcknowledgmentsThank you to Sotheby’s for the photos of the Patek Philippe

watch (Figure 3), Eric Tortella (www.erictortella.com) for Figure 7, Eric Ralph Ehrismann for the “Dragon” watch photo in Figure 8, Joel Pynson for the advertisement shown in Figure 21, David Seyffer for information on IWC and the Borgel wristwatch, and James Dowling for the discussion on the nonexistence of “Fran-cis Baumgartner.” Thank you also to the watch forum websites Timezone.com and Watchuseek.com and their members for their help in gathering information for this article.

Special thanks to Flavia Ramelli, the Patek Philippe archi-vist, who has not only helped me with information about Patek Philippe but also discovered details of the life of Louisa Borgel, that François Borgel’s fi rst factory was in the old Tiffany factory in Geneva, and many other helpful comments on early drafts.

About the AuthorDavid Boettcher lives in Cheshire, England. He worked for

20 years in nuclear power construction before working for himself. He holds a degree in Engineering Science from the University of Bath, is a Chartered Engineer, a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, and a registered Eu-ropean Engineer. He has pursued careers in retail and IT and now works as a freelance engineer and IT consultant. His inter-est in vintage wristwatches was sparked when he inherited his grandfather’s 1918 silver Rolex and grandmother’s 1917 gold Rolex wristwatches. His website is www.VintageWatchStraps.com, and he welcomes comments or questions by email to [email protected].


franÇois borgel, louisa borgel, and the taubert family watchcase makers of … · 2017-02-28 ·...

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