FRANÇOIS BORGEL, LOUISA BORGEL, AND THE TAUBERT FAMILY Part Three: The Taubert Family

Transcription

1 FRANÇOIS BORGEL, LOUISA BORGEL, AND THE TAUBERT FAMILY Part Three: The Taubert Family The Taubert Family In 1924 the Borgel watchcase-making business was acquired from Louisa Borgel by the Taubert family of Le Locle. The partners in the new company were Paul-Arthur Taubert, father, and his sons Marcel, Paul-Emile, and Bernard. The Taubert family was evidently involved in watchcase making before this venture. In 1921 Paul Taubert was recorded (Figure 57) in La Fédération Horlogère Suisse 1 as a partner of the firm Alber, Mischler & Cie, fabr. de boîtes de montres or [makers of gold watchcases] at 141 Rue Numa Droz in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the center of the modern Swiss watchmaking industry, which had grown up from the eighteenth century away from the restrictive practices of the trade guilds in Geneva. The announcement says that the company is continued by the two remaining members Arnold Alber, of Tramelan-dessous, and Paul Taubert, of Le Locle, under the name Alber & Co. The & Cie in Alber, Mischler & Cie and the & Co. presumably refer to Paul Tauber, indicating that he was a junior associate, but still part of the management. Later announcements stated that the sons of Paul Taubert also were originally from Le Locle, another important Swiss watchmaking town very close to La Chaux-de-Fonds. by David Boettcher (ENG) Part One of this series, on earlier Borgel watchcase technology and history, was published in the September/October 2012 W&C Bulletin, and Part Two was published in the November/December 2012 issue. Figure 57. Paul Taubert succeeds Paul Mischler. Figure 58. Patent CH changes hands. clear that she was still running the business at the time of the sale, so it seems likely that she had decided to retire by selling the business. Louisa had carried the business along for almost exactly 12 years after the death of her father François Borgel in March 1912, including through the period of great stress and anxiety, and also intense activity for the Borgel company, caused by World War I from 1914 to In Figure 59 we have the official announcements from La Fédération Horlogère Suisse of the registration of Taubert et Fils, Manufacture de boîtes Borgel, and the final striking off (radiation) of the company of Louisa Beau- Taubert & Fils To take over the Borgel company, Paul Taubert and his sons created a company called Manufacture des boîtes Borgel, Taubert & Fils [Taubert and Sons]. In the announcements in La Fédération Horlogère Suisse shown in Figure 58 we can see that, as part of the takeover, Louisa Beauverd-Borgel first bought the rights to the Charles Rothen patent CH on February 15, 1924, still giving her address as 10 Rue des Pêcheries. Then on March 6, 1924, Louisa transferred the rights to the patent to Taubert et Fils, whose address is also given as 10 Rue des Pêcheries. From this record of the transfer of patent CH 88223, first to Louisa and then from her to the Tauberts, it is Figure 59. Taubert & Fils registered and Louisa Beauverd- Borgel struck off. NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin March/April

2 Figure 60. Taubert & Fils patent CH Figure 62. Taubert & Fils registration. verd Borgel. Both announcements are dated April 28, 1924, so this was the official date of the end of the Borgel family in watchcase making. But it was not the end of the association of the Borgel name and the famous FB-key trademark with watchcase making. On January 25, 1925, the new firm of Taubert & Fils registered patent CH , the heading of which is shown in Figure 60, proudly declaring Manufacture Des Boîtes Borgel, Taubert & Fils. This patent is noted as an additional patent, subordinate to the main patent CH 88223, which they had acquired from Charles Rothen via Louisa Borgel. Patent CH does not introduce any revolutionary invention, being confined to the addition of a screw cap over the winding crown to seal the crown and stem. I have not seen a watchcase made by the Tauberts to this design, so it was perhaps more of a place marker to show that Taubert & Fils had arrived on the scene and were serious about pushing forward the business of making patent waterproof watchcases. In an advertisement in the Journal Suisse d Horlogerie 2 in April 1925, shown in Figure 61, Taubert & Fils described themselves as Manufacturers of Borgel cases and Successors of Louisa Beauverd- Borgel, a company founded in Taubert & Fils made a big play of the Borgel name and trademark in their Figure 61. Taubert advertisement. advertisement they appear no fewer than five times so the continuity and goodwill of this business represented an important part of the acquisition. The advertisement says they make Borgel screw watch cases and all other screw systems. Around the FB trademark the advertisement says Ouvrage soigné et garanti exigez notre marque de fabrique [Properly finished and guaranteed products require our trademark]. The advertisement finishes with Seule la boîte de montre à vis Borgel protège hermétiquement le mouvement de votre montre [Only the Borgel screw case hermetically protects the movement of your watch]. Taubert & Fils reregistered the FB-key trademark on January 23, 1926, as shown in Figure 62 from the official Swiss trademarks register, the Archives de l Horlogerie. 3 They evidently didn t perceive anything strange about a firm with the initials T&F using a trademark with the initials FB, because they carried on using the FB-key trademark into at least the late 1960s. Carrying on the fine work done by François and Louisa Borgel, Taubert & Fils became one of the finest Geneva-based casemakers, specializing in water-resistant cases and working for many firms, including Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, and many, many others, although their name was (and still is?) hardly known outside the watchmaking trade. Poinçons de Maître In the mid-1920s a new requirement was introduced in Switzerland that precious metal (gold and platinum) watchcases must carry a poinçon de maître, literally punch of the master but usually translated as responsibility mark, to identify the maker. Makers could use their own registered mark, such as the Tauberts FB-key mark, but many chose to use a collective responsibility mark. This consisted of a registered trademark of an association of manufacturers, where each member of the association was assigned a registration number that formed part of their mark, to identify them uniquely. The Tauberts decided to use both methods of marking their work. Collective responsibility marks for Swiss watchcases 166 March/April 2013 NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin

3 were first registered by the trade association Fédération Suisse des Associations de Fabricants de Boîtes de Montres Or, the Swiss Association of Gold Watch Case Makers, sometimes known by the initials F.B. (NB: don t confuse this F.B. with the Borgel/Taubert FB it has been done!) Six collective responsibility marks were defined as shown in Figure 63. Figure 63. Collective responsibility marks. From left to right they are: 1. Hammer-head, or hammer without handle [sans manche]: for gold and platinum watchcases made in Switzerland but outside Geneva. 2. Hammer with handle: No official description extant. 3. Marquee: for silver watchcases made in Switzerland. 4. Crossbow: for silver watchcases. 5. Geneva Key: for gold and platinum watchcases made in Geneva of thickness 0.3mm or greater. 6. Shield: for gold and platinum watchcases made in Geneva of thickness less than 0.3mm. The individual casemakers are identified by a two- or three-digit registration number that is stamped where the XX is shown in the picture. The F.B. changed its name in 1966 to Union Suisse des Fabricants de Boîtes de Montre (USFB). Later, the association changed its name a second time to the Union Suisse pour l Habillage de la Montre (USH), and from 2006 it became USH-APIC, and merged with ANIM in 2009 to become apiah. I am taking the definitions of the marks from information supplied to me by USH-APIC, and I recognize that some of it is slightly inconsistent, such as the appearance in the list of marks for silver cases, which are not required by Swiss law to carry responsibility marks. I suspect the reason for this is lost in the mists of time. Initially, the responsibility marks were filed in the Office of Control of the district of residence of the manufacturer, but since July 11, 1934, all these marks are recorded by the Swiss Central Office for Precious Metal Control in Bern. They are stamped only on the watchcase, not on the bracelet. Manufacture Taubert was registered to use both mark number 1, the hammerhead, and mark number 5, the key of Geneva. I was surprised to find that Taubert had a registration under mark number 1, which is specifically for gold and platinum watchcases made in Switzerland but outside Geneva, but I was informed by apiah 4 that Manufacture Taubert commenced activities in La Chaux-de-Fonds, which explains their registration to use mark No. 1. This registration was canceled in In both cases their registration number was 11, so if you ever see a case with either the hammerhead mark or the Geneva key mark stamped in it, and 11 where the XX are in the picture of collective responsibility marks, you know it was made by the Taubert company. You can see the Manufacture Taubert registration for the Geneva key symbol in Figure 64 just after the entry for Frédéric Baumgartner, the maker of the cases for the Omega Marine and Marine Standard I discussed in a my article in the February 2012 issue of the Watch & Clock Bulletin. Example of Taubert Responsibility Mark Cushion case watches such as the one shown in Figures 65 and 66 are often described as having Borgel cases because they have the FB-key trademark. But the case is not a Borgel, or even a Taubert design; it was made by the Tauberts under contract to Schwob Frères. The case is a one-piece design, without an opening back, in this instance made of 9-karat gold. It has a screw bezel which, when removed, allows the movement, in a ring and further protected by an inner dust cover, to swing out on a hinge. The inner dust cover can then be removed to reveal the movement. The movement in this watch is a 15-jewel movement made by Cyma, one of Borgel s oldest customers. The case is marked inside at the top with the Taubert FB-key trademark and at the bottom with the collective responsibility mark of the Geneva key with the number 11 on the lever, the mark for Manufacture Taubert. I have Figure 65. Cushion case watch. Figure 66. Watchcase inner back. Figure 64. Extract from record of Mark No NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin March/April

4 highlighted this mark because it is not easy to see on the reduced size image. Then, working down from the top, the other marks are a Swiss patent, referred to in the case back by the word PATENT followed by a cross for Switzerland and then the patent number , the Glasgow Assay Office import mark of two reclining F s one above the other, the assay year date letter n for 1936/37, the 9 and 375 purity indicators for 9-karat gold, and the initials SFC in a fancy cameo, which stand for Schwob Frères & Co. Ltd. Swiss patent CH for a Boîte de montre was deposited on March 17, 1931, by Schwob Frères & Cie SA of La Chaux-de-Fonds and published on June 30, 1932 (Figure 67). Schwob Frères owned the Figure 67. Swiss patent CH Tavannes / Cyma watch company and were listed in Tavannes / Cyma advertisements as their retailers. So we can see that Schwob Frères designed and patented the case, and then had cases to this patent design manufactured by Taubert & Fils to take Cyma movements. These cases are sometimes said to be related to the early Rolex Oyster because of their appearance, but the construction is very different from that of a Rolex Oyster, particularly in the lack of sealing around the stem and the point where the stem tube enters the case; the similarity is purely in appearance. Early Taubert Developments In the mid-1920s the Tauberts started experimenting with new case designs. They were still manufacturing as their principal product the Borgel one-piece screw case, but because that design was over 30 years old when they bought the company, the time was clearly ripe for a new design to carry the firm forward for the next 30 years. Figure 68. Screw-on back case exploded. Screw-On Back Case The watch shown in Figure 68 is a development of the original Borgel screw design. The case is silver and carries the FB-key Taubert trademark and Edinburgh import hallmarks for 1926/27. The movement is still held in a threaded carrier ring like the older Borgel screw case, giving the same benefits of the strength and economy of the base metal carrier ring forming the backbone of the case, but in this design it is the bezel and middle part of the case that are made in one piece. The movement drops into the carrier ring where it is held in place by the two case screws shown, just as in the earlier design. The case is internally threaded and the carrier ring and movement screw into the case from the back. When the carrier ring is screwed fully into the front part of the case, some thread of the carrier ring remains protruding out of the middle part of the case. The case back, which is internally threaded and has coin edge milling around its periphery, screws onto the protruding thread and Figure 69. Screw-on back case. down tight against the middle part of the case, as shown in Figure 69. The way to remove the movement from one of these cases is to unscrew the back of the case, loosen the set lever screw, which releases the stem from the keyless work, and pull out the crown and stem, and then unscrew the threaded carrier ring holding the movement from the middle/front part of the case. Once the carrier ring and movement are unscrewed from the case, you can remove the case screws and the movement will push out from the front of the carrier ring. I think it is clear that this is a fairly small evolutionary development of the original Borgel screw case. If the case back had been made a push-fit onto the threaded carrier ring, it would have been, in principle, the old case reversed, screwing in from the back rather than the front. The removable back allowed use of a more modern stem-set movement design, which requires access to the back of the movement to release the stem. It was made to screw on to make it more watertight than a simple snap-on back. There is no sign of any attempt to make a waterproof seal where the stem enters the case. I have only seen two cases of this design: the round silver one pictured and a rectangular cushion -shaped case in gold. Screw-In Back Case The next development appears to have been the case shown in Figures 70 and 71. The silver case carries the FBkey Taubert trademark and London import hallmarks giving a date of 1927/28, 168 March/April 2013 NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin

5 making it a little later than the one described immediately above. It has a screw-in, as opposed to screw-on, back, with coin edge milling around the almost-flush periphery to give a grip for unscrewing. This screw-in arrangement gives a neater appearance than the earlier screw-on back. The watch is in poor condition and is incomplete, but it is the only one I have seen of this design. The back of the case has an external screw thread with an extended flange. The case middle has a channel outside the screw thread, which the back screws in to, to take a gasket that would form a seal against the extended flange of the back, although there is no trace of the gasket left. The stem tube is internally flanged at each end as if to take a seal or gasket of some sort for sealing the stem, but the stem is missing and there is no trace of any elastic sealing material. But the design is similar to that of a stem seal that the Tauberts later patented, which is discussed below. The movement sits in a carrier ring, somewhat like the carrier ring in the original Borgel screw case and the screw-on back case, but this carrier ring is not externally threaded; it just sits in the case and is held in place by the screw-on case back. The case screws that would normally hold the movement in the carrier ring are missing from this example. There is a slot in the carrier ring that engages with a key inside the middle part of the case to prevent the carrier ring and movement rotating. This was an advanced waterproof case for the time. Because this one is hallmarked 1927, the Tauberts must have been developing this case design almost in tandem with Rolex developing the Oyster. How different the world of wristwatches might have been if the Tauberts had beaten the Rolex Oyster to market with their design of a waterproof watch! Two Important Patents In 1928 and 1931 the development work that the Tauberts had undertaken bore fruit and they registered two patents that would bring them back to the forefront of waterproof watchcase design, and carry the firm forward for the next 30 or more years. For the future of the firm, these were very important patents. The first included a cork seal that sealed the Figure 70, above. Screw-in back exploded. Figure 71, below. Screw-in back case. aperture through which the winding stem entered the watchcase; the second was a screw back case with a very distinctive decagonal design, a feature that enabled the Tauberts to fight off counterfeiters for the duration of the patent. The Cork Stem Seal On January 18, 1928, Taubert & Fils registered Swiss patent number CH The patent was principally concerned with making waterproof watchcases slimmer, but also introduced a feature that would become very important to Taubert watchcases in the future: a seal around the winding stem. In the figure from the patent reproduced here (Figure 72), the seal 13 is held in a cup-shaped socket 10, which is soldered to the case, a bit like a pocket watch pendant. The seal is held in place in the pendant by a retaining ring 14 that clips into the end of the pendant. The patent specifies that the seal is made of a material which is elastic and impervious to water. In practice, the Tauberts used natural cork, which was specially treated to avoid drying out. In actual manufacture the stem tube was made slightly different from the illustration in the patent. The intention of the patent is clearly that the seal is inserted into the socket and then the retaining disc 14 is put in place to retain it. In actual manufacture, a tube with a reduced opening at its outer end was welded to the watchcase, forming the housing for the seal as shown in Figure 73. The cork seal was introduced into this housing by compressing it by using a tool with a tapered tube so that it would pass through the opening at the outer end and then expand into the housing. The type of tool used Figure 72, left. Patent CH Figure 73, below. Stem tube with cork seal. NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin March/April

6 Figure 74. Cork seals and tool. is shown in Figure 74 with some of the cork seals. The cork seal is loaded into the breach of the tool, just below the aluminum crossbar, which acts as a finger grip. Pressure by the thumb on the plunger then drives the cork seal down a tapered bore, compressing it radially so that it will enter the housing on the watchcase. The raw cork material was carefully selected and then heat treated and greased before being introduced into the watch stem housing. In an age before a wide variety of synthetic sealing materials were available, it produced a remarkably effective seal. This was very different from the screw-down waterproof crown that Rolex had introduced in The cork seal prevented water passing through the opening for the winding stem without the need to unscrew the crown before winding or setting the watch. Although perhaps not watertight to such great depths and pressures as a screwdown crown, it was the perfect solution for the person who wanted a waterproof watch without the additional complication of unscrewing the crown every day to wind the watch very few watches were self-winding or automatic at the time. It also had the distinct benefit that it remained watertight while winding the watch and with the crown drawn out to set the hands. It was not until quite recently that screw-down crowns were fitted with additional O ring seals in the stem tube, and even today the pressure resistance of these is not as good as the Taubert cork seal. There is a bit of a mystery surrounding this patent because the British version of it, GB Fluid Tight Watch Case registered January 18, 1929, was taken out by Hans Wilsdorf, Managing Director of Rolex, describing himself as assignee of Taubert & Fils. Why and how this came about I don t yet know, but Wilsdorf must have allowed the Tauberts to continue producing watchcases with the cork seal, because they carried on using this design for many years, although they didn t make a lot of noise about the cork seal being their patent presumably, they couldn t make the claim, having assigned the patent to Wilsdorf. But Wilsdorf and Rolex don t appear to have used or claimed patent on the cork seal, so it must have been another aspect of the patent, which was mainly about making watches thinner, that Wilsdorf was interested in. One of the many manufacturers who bought cork stemsealed watchcases from Taubert was the firm Mido. Dr. Roland Ranfft 5 comments, High Tech: Mido was known in the 40ies for progress in technologie: Steel case, Incabloc, and Aquadura - until today the only sealing even reliable with pulled crown. Mido called the cork stem seal Aquadura in 1959, after the Taubert patent had expired. Until recently Mido were still using the Aquadura cork stem seal in some of their watches. The Decagonal Back Case Most early waterproof watches used case backs with screw threads that screwed onto or into the middle part of the case. At first these threaded case backs were machined with coin edge type milling, like the bezel of the original Borgel screw case, to provide a grip to tighten and release them by hand. To get a tighter seal than possible by hand tightening for the Rolex Oyster, in 1929 Hans Wilsdorf patented (CH ) a tool outfit called the Eazy Oyster Opener, which engaged with the milled edges on the screw back and bezel, enabling a greater torque to be applied than could be achieved by hand. But milled edges are not ideal for gripping mechanically, and designs were soon developed by other companies for tightening case backs, such as notches or slots cut into the periphery of the case back. These systems used special keys that engaged with the notches or slots and are still familiar today. However, Rolex continued with, and still use, a development of the milled design, requiring a special dedicated tool to unscrew the case back. Rather than use slots or notches for their screw case back or continue with the coin edge milling as Rolex did, the Tauberts designed a back that had flats around the circumference, rather like the flats on a nut. By using a decagonal (10-sided) pattern they could make each flat quite small, making a very neat and attractive alternative to slots or notches. The patent for a watchcase including this feature was deposited on May 8, 1931, and published on August 31, 1932, under N CH This patent was also registered in the UK under N GB , which was applied for on May 9, 1932, and published as complete accepted on December 29, The distinctive decagonal case back was to become an instantly recognizable feature of cases that the Tauberts supplied to many watch manufacturers for many years. This watchcase was also the subject of two court cases in which many interesting facts were brought to light. The diagram from the patent in Figure 75 also shows a screw bezel with the same flats as on the case back. I don t believe Taubert made any decagonal back cases with the decagonal screw bezel shown in the patent; at least I have not seen one yet! Figure 76 shows a selection of keys made by the Taubert company for unscrewing the backs of decagonal cases. These pressed keys are very simple and compact compared to the Eazy Oyster Opener designed by Wilsdorf, which was the size of a small bench press. The keys engage very 170 March/April 2013 NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin

7 Figure 76. Decagonal keys. positively and securely with the decagonal case back and make it very Figure 75. Patent CH easy to open, certainly compared to using a JAXA-type universal tool on a case back with small peripheral slots, where it is very easy to slip and mark the case back. With a decagonal key it is virtually impossible to slip, and even if you do, the key has no sharp points to mark the case back. This was such a simple and elegant solution to the problem that, if it hadn t been successfully patented by the Tauberts, it would probably have been universally adopted. Figure 77 shows a West End Watch Co. watch with a decagonal back case supplied by Taubert. You can see that where the polygonal flats meet the flat part of the case back that carries the external screw thread, this is flush with the case, making a very neat joint that no one would think of trying to get a knife into to lever the case back off with. To make certain that the screw-down back would make a good seal with the case, a gasket was interposed between the two. These were at first made of lead, but later as plastics improved, synthetic materials were used. The precision with which these cases were made always impresses me when I unscrew the back of one. The screw back is delicately and precisely made, economical of material but very strong. François Borgel would have definitely approved! These decagonal cases have an inner cover, which you can see in Figure 78. This is often described as either a dust cover or an anti-magnetic shield. It is neither of these. The screw back forms an excellent seal on its own, so a dust cover is hardly needed, and the cover is not ferromagnetic, so it could not protect the movement against a magnetic field. The cover is in fact used to hold the movement in place. The movement is mounted in an unthreaded carrier ring as shown in Figure 79, rather like the carrier ring of the original Borgel screw case and the Taubert developments of this described above. The movement is held in place in the carrier ring by two case screws. The carrier ring is a snug fit into the case, just as in the screw-in back case described above. However, in the decagonal case design the back does not hold the carrier ring in place directly. Instead, the inner cover fits onto the end of the carrier ring as shown in Figure 80, and the small nub in the center of the cover enables the case back to hold the cover, and hence the movement ring, in place. As the design developed in stages from the original Borgel screw case, the carrier ring became gradually less substantial, giving up its role of reinforcing the case and allowing less of the expensive material to be used for the outer case. In the decagonal case design the carrier ring is quite slim. Figure 79. West End Sowar Prima exploded. Figure 77. Decagonal case back. Figure 78. Back and inner cover. Figure 80. Inner cover and carrier ring. NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin March/April

8 The use of the carrier ring in this case design enabled slightly different sized movements to be fitted to a standard case size, by machining the carrier rings internally to fit the movement while keeping their outside dimensions the same, to fit the standard case. The carrier ring is made of brass, which is much easier to machine accurately than the hard stainless steel of the case, the consequences of the use of which I discuss below. The effectiveness of the Taubert decagonal back case is shown by the fact that although this West End watch has had a fairly tough life, probably mostly spent in the damp and tropical heat of India the stamp on the inner cover visible in Figure 80 is CS(I), the mark of the British Civil Service in India the movement is virtually as clean and crisp as the day it left the factory. The Change from Borgel to Taubert cases Although they continued to manufacture the old Borgel screw case for many years, the new cases described in these two patents, CH for the cork stem seal, and CH for the decagonal back case, were the foundation for the Tauberts future success, and their main production over decades to come, and they supplied them to many watch manufacturers. Almost unbelievably, one of these designs is still in use today, and the other was until recently. In 2008 Mido launched the Baroncelli Jubilee wristwatch using the cork stem seal, which I understand is now no longer used, and the decagonal case back design is still used by the West End Watch Co. For the man in the street who wanted a watch that he didn t need to worry about if it got wet, for example when washing hands, the decagonal back case with cork seal was the perfect answer not ultimately as watertight as a dive watch, but perfectly satisfactory for everyday use, giving a watch a good degree of protection against water and capable of withstanding greater pressures than one might think, but without the extra cost and complication of the screw-down crown. They are very distinctive and easy to spot, even in a fuzzy ebay photograph, and I am amazed at how often watches with this case appear with names I have never heard before. The splendid advertisement reproduced in Figure 81 from the 1939 edition of La Classification Horlogère Suisse 6 shows a watch with one of these Taubert decagonal back cases strapped to a submarine with the headline The waterproof watch par excellence [La montre étanche par excellence]. Stainless Steel Stainless steel, acier inoxydable in French, initially called rustless steel in English, was invented accidentally by Harry Brearley in 1913 when he was trying to improve the alloy steel used for gun barrels. Brearley was head of the joint Brown Firth Research Laboratories in Sheffield, set up by John Brown and Company and Thomas Firth & Sons. In 1912 Brearley had been asked to look into the failure due to internal erosion of rifle barrels manufactured by the Royal Small Arms factory in Enfield, near London. Brearley thought that steel Figure 81. Advertisement in La Classification Horlogère Suisse. with an increased proportion of chromium above the five percent then in use might solve the problem and ordered in October 1912 two crucible melts of steels having 10 percent to 15 percent chromium. Both melts proved too high in carbon, but Brearley persisted with more melts, and a successful cast, No. 1008, with 0.24 percent carbon and percent chromium was made on August 20, Samples were sent to Enfield for testing as rifle barrels but didn t show the desired improvement. While testing the material in the laboratory, Brearley noticed that it resisted acid etching for microscopic examination of its crystal structure, and he was surprised to notice that samples left in the laboratory atmosphere didn t rust. Brearley s low-carbon alloy of iron and chromium was Martensitic stainless steel, meaning it had a very hard form of steel crystalline structure in the hardened condition, but was amenable to annealing by heat treatment to make it workable. Brearley realized that this new material was ideal for cutlery, particularly knives, which at the time had carbon steel blades that rusted very easily, and he persuaded a friend, Ernest Stuart of R. F. Mosley & Co., to try it out. Stuart reported that blades made from the material had proved rustless (Stuart commented that stainless steel would be a more marketable name than rustless steel), but that the steel was so hard to forge it ruined his tools! Eventually, with Brearley s advice on forging techniques 172 March/April 2013 NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin

9 Does the FB-key mark always indicate a Borgel case? When Taubert & Fils took over the Borgel company, continuity of business was very important to them, so, in addition to the family name, they called the new firm manufacture des boîtes Borgel (makers of Borgel watchcases) and continued to use the FB-key trademark. But they carried on using the FB-key trademark long after the last Borgel designed case had been made. Because of the FB-key mark, and also because Taubert & Fils is not a well-known name, later cases with the FB-key mark are often called Borgel cases. It is fair to call the screw cases designed by Borgel but manufactured by the Tauberts Borgel cases. But cases designed after 1924, such as the decagonal screw backs, had no input from François Borgel, and the company making them was no longer called Borgel. The company was called Taubert & Fils, or Taubert Frères, the cases were designed by the Tauberts, and they should rightly be called Taubert cases. However, I expect that many people will still (understandably) call them Borgel cases because of the FB-key trademark. and heat treatment, satisfactory methods of working the material were developed. However, Firths didn t make the most of Brearley s discovery, and it wasn t patented in the UK, so many firms started making their own versions of stainless steel. Martensitic stainless steels are ferromagnetic and not as resistant to corrosion as later stainless steels, so they are not often used now unless very hard wearing is required. Brearley was succeeded by Dr. W. H. Hatfield who developed an Austenitic stainless by the addition of nickel as well as chromium to iron, arriving at a steel containing 18 percent chromium and 8 percent nickel (often called 18-8 stainless steel ). Austenitic stainless steels are nonmagnetic and cannot be hardened by heat treatment, but they can be hardened by cold working. From 1924 this new alloy was marketed by Thomas Firth & Sons under the name Staybrite and went on to be widely used in making kitchen utensils. John Brown and Company and Thomas Firth & Sons merged in 1930, becoming Firth Brown Steels. In the early 1930s, Geneva jewelry, watch bracelet, and watchcase manufacturers were searching for a cheaper material to use instead of the precious metals they were used to, because the Great Depression, the worldwide 10- year financial slump that followed the 1929 Wall Street crash, reduced demand for expensive items, so they needed to cut costs and reduce prices. Cedric Jagger 7 noted that the biggest melting-down of precious metal watch cases of all time took place in the great... Depression of the 1930s. This melting down of watchcases for their precious metal naturally also meant that the demand for new watches in precious metal cases was reduced. Gold and silver cases were used for 51.8 percent of Swiss watches exported in 1920, falling to 29.1 percent in 1930 and only 5 percent in It is also notable that watches shrank to their smallest sizes in the 1930s, from a relatively common size for a man s watch of around 33 to 35mm diameter during World War I down to as small as 28mm in the 1930s. Part of the reason for this seems to have been that watchmakers competed to make smaller and smaller watches to show off their technical prowess, but because ladies wristwatches had been available in this size for many years, there must have been another reason that started this trend. A natural desire not to flaunt one s wealth during a period of such austerity, and therefore for a small and discreet wristwatch, was probably the origin of this fashion. Stainless steel was an obvious material to use, but because it was much harder than the silver and gold they were used to, they found it was difficult or impossible to shape, machine, and polish with their hand tools and traditional, time-honored techniques, and it required changes in the way the watchcases were made. Silver and gold watchcases were traditionally made by forming, with simple hand tools, bar and sheet material into individual parts of the case, which were then soldered together and polished so that the joints between the component parts were invisible. This method of making watchcases developed before powered machinery was invented, but it was continued, partly out of tradition but also because it was an economical way of handling the costly raw materials used: silver, gold, and platinum. Even when powered machinery became available and it would have been possible to machine a watchcase from the solid, the sheer availability and cost of blocks of silver and gold, together with the requirement to gather and reprocess large amounts of precious swarf, made this method of production economically impossible, so the old methods continued. But the advent of stainless steel changed everything. It was not practicable to make steel cases in the traditional way; the material was much harder than gold or silver, too hard to form by hand into the individual pieces required by the old methods. And making the many welded or soldered joints required by the traditional methods was difficult in steel. Neither was it necessary economically. As a raw material, steel was cheap so cheap that its cost could, for all intents and purposes, be ignored in watchcase making. It was economical to machine away large amounts of material during the manufacturing process. But this couldn t be done on an old hand-turned bow lathe; it required powerful machines. In an article in the Journal de Genève 9 on April 4, 1934, Philip Werner, professor at the School of Watchmaking in Geneva, reported progress that had been been made in working with the new material. After explaining the difficulties of machining and forming stainless steel, which at the beginning made them despair, and the processes NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin March/April

10 developed to overcome these difficulties, M. Werner presented the audience with various objects from the watch bracelet makers Gay Frères, the jewelry factory of A. and E. Wenger, and the watchcase factory of Taubert & Fils. Taubert & Fils had been working with stainless steel from the late 1920s and were evidently selected to demonstrate that they had the techniques and processes necessary for making watchcases out of stainless steel to the rest of the watchcase industry in Geneva. The Tauberts had evidently invested heavily in modern machinery for their factory on the Rue des Pêcheries to be able to make the case this way, giving them a technical lead over many other Geneva watchcase makers. A Taubert advertisement in 1943 noted that the serial production of stainless steel watchcases was made possible by the move of the old Borgel factory to the current spacious, light and powerfully equipped (emphasis added) factory in Plainpalais. Staybrite steel had been introduced to the Swiss watch industry in the 1920s by Firth Steel Sales AG founded in 1919 in Switzerland as a subsidiary of Firth Brown, but until the 1929 crash had received little interest from Geneva watchmakers. A combination of financial pressures due to the crash and advertising by the makers of stainless steel promoting it as a new wonder material suitable for the modern age resulted in an interest to use it for watchcases. In his presentation M. Werner mentioned that the steel was an alloy containing 12 percent nickel and 12 percent chromium and whose colour is particularly beautiful. Staybrite steel with 12 percent chrome and 12 percent nickel was called Deep-Drawing Quality (DDQ) because it had better cold workability than 18/8 stainless steel. In engineering terms, drawing is a forming process in which the metal is drawn over a former, or pressed into a die (mold) by a punch. Deep drawing refers to a drawing process where the depth of the drawn component exceeds the thickness of the material. The original 18/8 stainless steel was not sufficiently ductile to allow deep drawing, so the DDQ alloy with less chromium and more nickel was developed. Staybrite DDQ was less corrosion resistant compared to 18/8 stainless steel due to the lower chromium content, but 18/8 steel couldn t be formed into watchcases by drawing, so Staybrite DDQ was used for Swiss watches until the 1960s and 1970s when new stainless steel alloys, still closely based on the original composition of Staybrite DDQ, were developed. Today the brand name Staybrite belongs to F. W. Hempel & Co. and is registered and protected in numerous countries. In the final installment of this series, Part 4, we will take a look at some Tauberts customers, including two important Geneva watchmakers who placed early orders for watchcases with the Tauberts because of their expertise in working stainless steel, and who were consequently also early adopters of the Taubert waterproof decagonal back case with cork stem seal: Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin. Notes 1. La Fédération Horlogère Suisse, journal of the Swiss Chamber of Watchmaking, date as indicated. 2. Journal Suisse d Horlogerie et de la Bijouterie, Swiss Journal of Horology and Jewelery, date as indicated. 3. Archives de l Horlogerie, Marques de fabrique et de commerce Suisse Enregistrés par le Bureau fédéral à Berne, date as indicated. 4. Mme. Ginette Desboeufs apiah, private communication. 5. Dr. Roland Ranfft, 6. A. F. Jobin, La Classification Horlogere des Calibres de Montres et des Fournitures d Horlogerie Suisse, 1936, 1939, 1949, as indicated in text. 7. Cedric Jagger, The World s Great Clocks and Watches (London: Hamlyn Publishing, 1977). 8. Pierre-Yves Donzé, History of the Swiss Watch Industry, trans. Richard Watkins (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2011). 9. The Journal de Genève. The daily newspaper of Geneva, Switzerland, from January 6, 1826, until February 28, Acknowledgments I thank Simon Collier for the pictures of the Cyma watch and the watch forum websites Timezone.com and Watchuseek.com and their members for their help in gathering information for this article. I especially thank Flavia Ramelli, the Patek Philippe archivist, who helped me with details of the Patek Philippe section and lots of other helpful comments. About the Author David 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 European Engineer. He has pursued careers in retail and IT and now works as a freelance engineer and IT consultant. His interest in vintage wristwatches was sparked when he inherited his grandfather s 1918 silver Rolex and grandmother s 1917 gold Rolex wristwatches. His watch interest website is www. VintagewatchStraps.com, and he welcomes comments or questions by to David.B.Boettcher@gmail.com. 174 March/April 2013 NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin