History of the Swiss watch industry : from Jacques David to Nicolas Hayek / translation by Pierre-Yves Donzé and Richard Watkins.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-161).

31560000039848 16688

A scholarly text in English on the history and structure of the Swiss watch industry (First published in French 2009 as BHM No. 14775) - Bookreview To understand the History of the Swiss Watch you need to understand the History of the Swiss Watch INDUSTRY History of the Swiss Watch Industry, From Jacques David to Nicholas Hayek, by Pierre-Yves Donz©♭. Translated from the French original by the author and Richard Watkins. Published 2011 by Paul Lang, Bern (Switzerland) 2011. ISBN 978-3-0343-1021-5. Paperback; 23 cm x 16cm, vii and 161 pages; numerous tables and graphs; 301 foot-notes, exhaustive bibliography. Available from the publisher at http://peterlang.com/index.cfm?cid=165 for circa 50US plus shipping, or at www.amazon.de. Most broadly interested students of horological history have -in the course of the years- read a significant number of books on the history of the Swiss watch. Most of these books fall in one of two categories. Either they are histories of the technology and innovation , or they are historical descriptive narratives regarding an individual or a brand. The book under review follows neither path, and thereby covers much ground hardly covered in any other publication. The author is a young Swiss academic who obtained his PhD in history at the University of Neuch©Øtel in 2005, and currently teaches at Kansai University in Osaka, Japan. His book is proof that in order to truly understand the history of any trade or industry it does not suffice to know the history of its technology, and the history of the key players (both individuals and corporations). Unless one studies the structure of an industry and how the different actors relate to each other, and how these relationships and structures change over time, it is impossible to comprehend an industry. Donz©♭ structures his history into four distinct periods: The first (covered on pages 5 - 26) is the pre-industrial era (1800-1870), before there were watch factories in Switzerland, which was characterized by the "©♭tablissage" system where the "etablisseur" ordered parts from countless independent workshops, and had them assembled by other subcontractors into watches. The result was an extreme fragmentation. In the town of La Chaux-de-Fonds alone there were in the year 1870 over 1300 independent enterprises (mostly family workshops), spread over 67 distinct specialities, but on average employing under 10 people each. Separate enterprises each made one component: balance spring makers, escapement makers, hand makers, gilders, case hinge makers, case polishers, enamel dial fitters, etc, to name just a few. The contrast to the USA, where Waltham had started mass producing machine made watches in the 1850s was dramatic. Rather than in a 'factory', Swiss watches were made in what Donz©♭ calls a local "industrial district" . The second period (1870-1918, pages 27-74) is characterized by the gradual industrialization of the watch industry. The Swiss horological industry reacted to the 'American challenge' by shifting production from mainly manual workshops, to mechanized factories. Just as important was the change from custom fitting each part to fit the others to part-making to specified dimensions and tolerances, a change pioneered by Jacques David, the young Technical Director of Longines, who - after experiencing the power of mass production at the Waltham booth at the 1876 Philadelphia exhibition -initiated and led a technology revolution throughout the industry. But there still was very little vertical integration. Separate enterprises continued to make cases, escapements, dials, wheels. Even if they were increasingly machine, driven they remained relatively small enterprises (the average factory in the horological industry in 1901 employed 37 people). The third period (1920- 1960, pages 75-114) covers the era of the Swiss watchmaking 'cartel', during which a government mandated and enforced set of rules prevented most forms of competition with