Electric Watch

Some 300 years ago one Daniel Jean-richard, blacksmith of the town of Le Locle in the canton of Neuchatel, Switzerland, turned from his horseshoeing to inspect an object in the hand of a friend. "Qu'est-ce que c'est que c,a?" he inquired.

"Une montre," said M. Jeanrichard's friend.

The friend's montre was a clock no bigger than a large bun. He had bought it in Geneva, where the things were made. Now it was broken. Could M. Jeanrichard do anything about it? M. Jeanrichard could try. He took the watch apart, spent several weeks trying to put it together again. Finally he sold out his forge and went to Geneva. He returned to establish watchmaking in Le Locle. One of his apprentices was a youth named Pellaton. Long after Blacksmith Jeanrichard was dead, Pellatons made watches, saw them grow smaller & smaller, finer & finer. The present Pellaton, Georges, who moved from Le Locle to Geneva, has seen the advent of wristwatches, electric clocks, self-winding watches. Last week he made his own contribution to the new science of watchmaking.

When Swiss watchmaking became standardized, divided among makers of various parts and the assemblers, Georges Pellaton retired. With time on his hands he set himself the task of devising a watch to run by electricity. Since nobody could carry a watch wired to a power socket, he had to put the power within the watch. After twelve years Watchman Pellaton perfected a storage battery no larger than the winding mechanism of an ordinary watch. The battery is recharged like any other storage battery, but very slowly. The charge lasts a year. It differs in principle from self-winding watches in that the electricity actually makes the watch go, does not merely wind a spring.

Last week, with his electric watch on display in Geneva, Inventor Pellaton was ready to start marketing it in quantities as soon as he got the aid of Geneva's powerful chamber of commerce which, government-backed, regulates the industry. Meanwhile his applications for patents were on file in other countries. Marketing in the U. S. will follow. But M. Pellaton, being a watchmaker, was less interested in the commercial aspects of his invention than in the scientific. He is now trying to make an electric wristwatch.

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