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Appetite for Swiss Made
When it comes to Swiss made watches, there's simply not enough to go around. That may be well and good but how and why did Swiss watches become so overwhelmingly popular? We investigate...
In your travels around the world – or sedentary excursions into the world of cable television – you may have chanced upon the great works of humanity that challenge time itself. Rising up from the desert like a provocation, the pyramids of Egypt seize the imagination and defy you to remember even a moment when they were absent from the gallery of images in your mind. Whatever your knowledge of history, the idea that a pyramid could have pre-dated the Egyptian ones seems more than a little incredulous, even though it is entirely possible.
The power of this undisputed wonder of the world is such that all other pyramids, especially those in Central and South America, seem to have taken their design cues from ancient Egyptian architecture. Of course, the idea that Mayan engineers hired Egyptian consultants or architects is as absurd as any suggestion that the Great Wall of China was inspired by Hadrian's Wall in Great Britain.
The similarities between all these ancient structures are very real though and are useful in illustrating the difficulties in pinpointing a single authoritative and original source. In a roundabout sort of way, much like Christopher Columbus' India-by-way-of-the-Atlantic route, this has a lot to do with horology, especially when one considers the importance of the phrase "Swiss Made." Basically, those words are the entry level when it comes to fine mechanical watches, Germany, Japan, France, China and all other watchmaking countries notwithstanding.
When you look at the numbers, the importance of Swiss Made watches quickly become apparent. In 1986, Switzerland exported CHF4.3 billion worth of watches. Twenty years later, that number is up to CHF13.7 billion. By way of contrast, production capacity has not kept pace with mounting demand from all corners of the world, with barely enough people employed in watchmaking today to support it all. For example, the industry employs 40,000 people today, compared with 30,000 in 1984 and 90,000 in the pre-Quartz Crisis days, to produce some 24.9 million timepieces (2006).
When the team here first asked ourselves when and how horology came to Switzerland, we felt a little like the intrepid Spain-by-way-of-Genoa adventurer must have felt when he realised he had stumbled onto an entirely different civilisation than he was expecting. Undaunted, we made like Dorothy and kissed Kansas goodbye.
Elsewhere in the magazine, we note that the mechanical clock probably originated in the 13th century in Western Europe and we shall stick to that nebulous date, since it is known that weight-driven clocks appeared in the 13th and 14 centuries. Everyone from Galileo Galilei to Leonardo Da Vinci had a hand in the early days of horology, even if their contributions were strictly theoretical. Professional organisations of clockmakers sprung up everywhere, most notably in Paris (1544) and Nuremberg (1565). The Watchmaker's Guild in Geneva was founded in 1601 and we shall return to this presently.
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