FRANÇOIS BORGEL, LOUISA BORGEL, AND THE TAUBERT FAMILY Louisa Borgel, Part Two

Transcription

1 FRANÇOIS BORGEL, LOUISA BORGEL, AND THE TAUBERT FAMILY Louisa Borgel, Part Two Louisa Borgel François Borgel died in his 56th year on March 7, 1912, and the business was taken over by his daughter Louisa Borgel. The Journal de Genève 1 of October 2, 1884, records the birth of Louisa-Henriette Borgel at some time between September 28 and October 1 (the exact date is not given). When taking over the business in March 1912, Louisa would have been 27 years old. Louisa had a sister Blanche, but I have never seen her name mentioned in connection with the Borgel Company. Figure 33 is a notice from La Fédération Horlogère Suisse 2 that shows on June 8, 1912, the company of F. (François) Borgel was struck off, and the assets and liabilities were taken over by L. (Louisa) Borgel, Manufacturer of waterproof Borgel screw watch cases. The address is still 78 Rue de St-Jean. 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. Figure 33. Louisa Borgel takes over the company. Figure 34 records a change of name of the business on March 28, 1913, from L Borgel to L Beauverd-Borgel. Louisa had evidently married M. Beauverd, but she retained her family name as part of her married name, as was common practice in Switzerland at the time. There is no specific address given in the notice, but Plainpalais is an area on the south Rive Gauche [Left Bank] of the river Rhône, the opposite side of the river to where her father had his factories. The district of Plainpalais is to the south and west of the oldest part of the city of Geneva. Figure 34. Louisa Borgel becomes Louisa Beauverd-Borgel. In a notice published in La Fédération Horlogère Suisse 2 in 1914 (not shown) the commercial registration of the company L. Beauverd-Borgel was transferred to an address at 14 Creux de St-Jean in the Petit-Saconnex district of Geneva, but I don t think this was a new factory location. I think it was simply the address of a registered office. On October 25, 1917, Louisa registered the company trademark in her own name (Figure 35). The mark remains the same, her father s initials FB over the key of Geneva. The registration states that the firm makes watches, watch parts, and cases [étuis]. The use of the specific word étuis for watch cases is unusual; they were usually referred to in Swiss-French as boxes [boîtes]. In the 1920 edition of the Indicateur Davoine 3 we find the advertisement shown in Figure 36, promoting the business of L. Beauverd-Borgel as the successor of L. Borgel. This seems to be rather a long time after Figure 35. Louisa Beauverd- Borgel trademark registration. Figure 36. Indicateur Davoine advertisement. the business name was changed, but this advertisement may have appeared in earlier versions that I don t have, and presumably Louisa just ran the same advertisement each year. The advertisement also still refers to the 1903 designed three-piece case as a new type [genre nouveau]. The text roughly translated says L. Beauverd ~ Borgel, successor of Borgel L. Impermeable Borgel screw cases. - Screw cases of one piece on dust guard. New type - Cases of 3 pieces screwed onto dust guard. - In gold of all purities, silver, steel, gold plate. - Factory and Office 10 rue des Pêcheries, Geneva. Note the new address in this advertisement: 10 rue des Pêcheries [the Street of the Fisheries], which is in the Plainpalais district of Geneva. This must be where the business moved to when it moved south of the river Rhône, as alluded to in the 1913 notice in Figure 34. At the beginning of the twentieth century, many of the Geneva companies involved in the watchmaking business moved from the St. Gervais district on the north 614 November/December 2012 NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin

2 bank of the river Rhône to this area south of the river, because changes in working practices such as increasing mechanization required more spacious and robust workshops. The rue des Pêcheries was a highly industrialized area where many watchmakers and casemakers worked. Another watchcase factory in this area was Weber & Cie SA, and Patek Philippe had a factory at 2 rue des Pêcheries between 1964 and Borgel Wristwatches in World War I In August 1914, two years after Louisa had taken charge of the company, Europe was plunged into a terrible war, during which the modern methods of fighting caused a huge upsurge in the demand for wristwatches, turning men s wristwatches from a novelty into an everyday sight. Before World War I (August 1914 to November 1918), most men carried a pocket watch. Although the benefits of a wristwatch were appreciated by military men, automobilists, and sportsmen, they were simply not fashionable for men to wear everyday. World War I at first required, and ultimately legitimized, men s wristwatches. The standard timepieces issued to officers were still pocket watches, but these were impractical to use in the cramped conditions of the trenches and in the open cockpits of early aircraft. Many officers soon purchased their own wristwatches; hence, these watches are often referred to as officer s watches, as well as trench watches because of Figure 37. Indicateur Davoine advertisement, their use in the trenches. The advertisement in Figure 37, from the 1918 edition of the Indicateur Davoine, shows a cavalry officer inspecting his Electa wristwatch. Whether it was a Borgel watch cannot be determined from the picture, but many Electa watches were cased in Borgel cases and this advertisement is a clear indication of why these watches are often called officer s watches. Figure 38. The takeup of wristwatches among military men during World War I was rapid. A book published during the kit list, Officer s war in 1916, Knowledge for War: Every Officer s Handbook ca. 1916, for the Front, 4 included a list of items in an officer s kit featuring a (Figure 38). The first item on the list, ahead of otherwise wristwatch indispensable items such as Revolver and Field glasses, is Luminous wrist watch with unbreakable glass. of the at the top list. COURTESY OF THE GALLET GROUP, INC. The 1916 Annual General Meeting of H. Williamson Ltd., a wholesaler of clocks, watches, and gold and silver ware in Coventry, England, was told that The public is buying the practical things of life. Nobody can truthfully contend that the watch is a luxury. In these days the watch is as necessary as a hat - more so, in fact. One can catch trains and keep appointments without a hat, but not without a watch. It is said that one soldier in every four wears a wristlet watch, and the other three mean to get one as soon as they can. Wristlet watches are not luxuries; wedding-rings are not luxuries. These are the two items jewellers have been selling in the greatest quantities for many months past 5 (emphasis added). As the war progressed and the techniques of warfare developed, the role of the wristwatch changed from being a convenience to a life-or-death requirement when the creeping or walking barrage was introduced. A creeping barrage involved artillery fire moving forward in stages, so that the shells were falling just ahead of the advancing infantry. First used at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, it was soon appreciated how important it was for the attacking troops to follow the barrage closely, leaning on the barrage, not allowing time for the defenders to emerge from their dugouts. This strategy required precise timing by both the heavy artillery and the infantry. Failure to achieve this would result in either the enemy having time to regroup or the artillery killing its own soldiers. There was no opportunity to stop during the advance to fish out a pocket watch. The creeping barrage was used to great effect in the Canadian success at Vimy Ridge in April There was a huge increase in demand for wristwatches during the war, and because Borgel watches were sturdier and better protected than watches with ordinary cases, NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin November/December

3 they were adopted by military men Figure 40 shows an advertisement in great numbers. Figure 39 shows from The Times 6 of February 1915 by a typical Borgel watch with the dial the Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Company Ltd. for their Military Luminous modified to appeal to a soldier. The numerals and hands are skeletonized to carry radium-based paint, larly throughout the period of the war, Watch. This advertisement was run regu- which was permanently luminous. as were advertisements for similar wristwatches by other retailers, all clearly (Note that although the paint on these old watches no longer glows aimed at men going out to the front who because the fluorescent material has were looking to buy the latest and best been exhausted, the radium is still kit. The Goldsmiths & Silversmiths radioactive and should be treated Company was a company of retail jewelers and silversmiths, first established in with caution. There is no need to panic; the watch is safe to wear, but In 1898 the firm converted into Figure 39. Military-style Borgel. avoid breathing in any flakes of the a limited liability company, The Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Company Ltd., and in 1952 this luminous paint.) Watch dials at this time were made from a thin sheet of copper covered with white enamel with company merged with Garrard & Co. Ltd., the Crown the numerals and minute track picked out in white. After Jewellers since firing to fuse the enamel, they were indelible, but rather prone to cracking, as has happened to the dial of the case, described as a patented one-piece silver case into The watch in the advertisement clearly has a Borgel watch in the figure. The luminous paint, a thick mixture which the entire movement screws, thus making the of radium and fluorescent zinc sulfide in varnish, was applied to the numerals after the dial had been fired and scribed as unequalled for Naval and Military service, for watch securely dust and damp proof. The watch is de- is often partly or completely missing from the numerals which it is specially adapted. The ad goes on to say that and from the hands. The large onion crown, a normal the watch is specially manufactured for the Goldsmiths Borgel feature, allows the watch to be wound when wearing gloves. This is a bit of a puzzle because I have seen many Borgel and Silversmiths Company, who control its distribution. The watch in Figure 39 has its 12 picked out in red. watches from this period, but none are marked with the This is in the enamel; it was not painted on later, which sponsor s mark of the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Company, G&S Co over Ltd in a trefoil-shaped cameo. sometimes happened. The red 12 is sometimes thought to be a sign of a military timepiece, but red, and occasionally blue, 12s appear on pre-world War I watches that are Figure 40. Goldsmiths advertisement. clearly not military pieces. When the wristwatch was a new idea, the position of the 12 wasn t immediately standardized at its now familiar position, and the contrasting color was used to establish the correct orientation of the watch by drawing the eye to the location of 12 o clock. Familiarity with clock and watch dials means that we do not often pause to think about how complex their display is. There are very few instruments that use two (or even three as in the case of a center seconds dial) coaxially pivoted hands, and none that are in such wide use. From an ergonomic perspective, this could be a nightmare, yet with the hands carefully designed so that it is apparent which is the hour hand and which is the minute hand, we can read the time to the exact hour and minute from a clock or watch dial at a glance. We can do this even if the numerals are replaced by simple markers and even in the extreme example of the Movado Museum watch if markers are completely absent (i.e., apart from a single dot at 12 o clock). It all hinges on the position of 12 o clock, which is why, when the wristwatch was new, the 12 was often picked out in a different color. It all comes down to ergonomics. 616 November/December 2012 NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin

4 The watch shown in Figure 41 came to me from Australia and is marked ExD. [Exported] by the Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Co. Ltd. 112 Regent St W1. But the strange thing is that the sponsor s mark is the CN of Charles Nicolet, and the movement is an IWC caliber 64, marked S&Co. under a crown in an oval cameo, all showing that it was imported to the UK by Stauffer & Co. of London. The majority of Borgel watches that I have seen from the World War I period were imported by two companies: Arthur George Rendell (sponsor s mark AGR) of 40/42 Clerkenwell Road, London, recorded as importers of Swiss watches from 1907, and George Stockwell & Co. (sponsor s mark GS) recorded in June 1907 as importers of silver and Assay Agents at 16/18 Finsbury Street, London. Many of the Borgel watches imported by Rendell have movements made by the firm of Gallet & Co., Fabrique d horlogerie Electa, formed in 1907 by a merger of Gallet & Cie and Société d horlogerie Electa. The watch in Figure 42 has one of these Electa movements, shown in Figure 43. There are no identifying marks on the movement, but I was fortunate enough to acquire a watch with one of these movements that had the name Electa on the dial, which gave me a big clue, and David R. Laurence, managing director of The Gallet Group, Inc., recently confirmed to me that these are in fact Electa movements. Most of these Electa movements are typical highquality Swiss lever 15-jewel unadjusted, but the one in Figure 42 has 17 jewels, four set in screwed chatons. It is marked adjusted, meaning that its timekeeping has been regulated in several positions, and it originally had a microadjuster modification to the Bosley regulator. This has been lost, but you can see the two securing holes for it next to the regulator lever. The microadjuster consisted Figure 42, left Borgel with Electa movement. Figure 43, right. Electa 17-jewel movement. of a spring curved around the regulator lever to bias it in one direction and a fine screw that could be used to move the regulator lever against the spring, allowing a finer adjustment to the regulator than could be achieved by simply moving it with the tip of a screwdriver. This type of regulator with a microadjuster is often called a swan s neck regulator because of the shape of the spring, but it is properly called a Reed regulator after the American George P. Reed, who invented it and patented it in 1867, U.S. patent No. 61,867. Figure 41. Goldsmiths & Silversmiths The Borgel Electa watch pictured in Borgel. Figures 42 and 43 carries Rendell s sponsor s mark and London import hallmarks for 1914 in the case back. It also bears an inscription on its outside back Presented to Capt. Thorpe with best wishes from No 6 Reserve Bgde RFA(T) for Auld Lang Syne This is a bit strange; I doubt that it sat on a retailer s shelf for nearly the full duration of the war! I have also not yet been able to track down any records of Captain Thorpe. I wonder if he was the subject of the Electa advertisement in Figure 37. (Unlikely, but it s a nice thought!) Other major importers of Borgel watches were the companies of Baume & Co. (sponsor s mark AB for Arthur Baume), 21 Hatton Garden, the London branch of Baume, a Swiss watch manufacturer; and the British agents for Longines, and Stauffer & Co. (sponsor s mark CN for Charles Nicolet), 13 Charterhouse Street, London, importers of watches made by Stauffer, Son & Co. of La Chaux-de-Fonds, IWC, and others. All of the Stauffer & Co. watches with Borgel cases that I have seen so far have IWC movements, but other Stauffer & Co. watches (stamped on the movement with S&Co. under a crown in an oval cameo) have non-iwc movements, so it is certainly not safe to assume that all Borgel watches with movements stamped with S&Co. under a crown in an oval cameo have IWC movements or in fact to assume that any movement stamped with S&Co. under a crown in an oval cameo is an IWC movement. Borgel watches were clearly topend items at the time. In addition to the Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Company Ltd., which held a Royal Warrant and was watchmaker to the Admiralty, Borgel watches were also retailed by Harrods, a well-known London department store. The Harrods advertisement shown in Figure 44 is from a 1918 edition of Punch. 7 The watch at the top is clearly a Borgel, a Luminous Watch, clearly visible at night, patent solid one-piece NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin November/December

5 Figure 44. Harrods advertsement, Figure 45. Borgel hunter advertisement, case into which the movement screws. Dust and damp proof. Jewelled lever movement. The price asked by Harrods, at three pounds three shillings, is the same as The Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Company Ltd., although I have seen Harrods advertisements from earlier in the war when they were asking two pounds and 15 shillings for the same watch. An interesting item in the Harrods advertisement is that although a Higher Grade watch is offered at four pounds and 12 shillings, a Smaller Size and Higher Grade watch is even more expensive at five pounds. Does this indicate the start of the fashion for smaller watches that continued in the 1930s? Another notable retailer of Borgel watches during the war was the company Sir John Bennett, Ltd., of Cheapside and Regent Street, London. The war changed the perception that wristwatches were not for men. Civilians started seeing men home on leave wearing wristwatches, and of course after the war men who were demobilized continued to wear the wristwatch they had worn on active service. The wristwatch became first an acceptable and later an essential male accessory. Borgel Hunter Watches A hunter or savonnette watch has a metal lid over the crystal and dial to protect them. I am fairly sure that the Borgel company never produced a hunter case, but the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths company advertised Borgelcased watches with hunter lids throughout the war. The advertisement from 1916 in Figure 45 shows a typical watch with a solid hunter lid hinged at 12 o clock. Other Goldsmiths and Silversmiths advertisements showed a watch with a half- or demi-hunter lid, with a small circular crystal in the center of the lid so that the time could be read without opening the lid. The advertisement refers to Patent No /15, a British patent filed on August 6, 1915, and granted on January 27, 1916, to Percy Harman Ball, manager, and the Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Company Limited. The patent says that the invention is specially applicable to watches wherein the movement screws into the case from the front clearly a Borgel screw case and continues Such watches are particularly suitable for use in exposed places, as the back not being made to open, dirt or moisture can only enter at the front and this is well sealed by the close fitting of the bezel against the case when the movement is screwed home. The added cover then protects the glass from damage, and has a further use for war purposes in that it can be dulled and thus the reflection from the glass which is likely to attract the notice of enemy snipers is prevented. It is clear that Mr. Ball was concerned that watches were 618 November/December 2012 NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin

6 being sent out for use at the front line in the trenches without the vulnerable crystal being protected and also that reflections from the glass could attract the attention of enemy snipers, so he patented a hunter cover to be attached to Borgel watches in the UK. The patent notes that Borgel watches are not normally made as hunters, because a hinge attached to the case would interfere with screwing the movement in, but that the patent design overcomes this by attaching the hinge to the bezel. Figure 46. Borgel hunter with land and hinge detail. How many of these conversions of standard open-face Borgel screw cases to hunters were performed is difficult to estimate. I have only ever seen one Borgel screw case where the bezel has been machined to form a land and fitted with a hinge (Figure 46), but the lid that was once fitted has been lost. The land cut into the bezel is a reasonable size, but the hinge is very small and has only three knuckles, a consequence of the small size of the wristwatch case in comparison to a pocket watch hunter. Such small hinges are okay if they are not to be used very often, but with constant opening of the lid to read the time, this hinge wouldn t have lasted very long. The watch in Figure 46 has London import marks for sterling silver and the date letter t for the hallmarking year 1914 to The sponsor s mark AGR shows the importer was the company of Arthur George Rendell. There may be more of these hunter Borgels out there than I think, because I don t particularly like the hunter style of case for a wristwatch and consequently, I don t look out for them. I don t like hunter wristwatches for two reasons: a piece of blank metal strapped to one s wrist is not very aesthetically pleasing and to read the time you must use your right hand to open the lid as well as using your left arm to bring the watch into sight. This rather defeats the object of the wristwatch as a device that can be easily read while leaving the other hand free. The demi-hunter style with a small crystal in the center of the lid improves the watch in this area, and certainly by 1918 Goldsmiths and Silversmiths ads were showing demi-hunter wristwatches. My personal view is that if the wearer wanted to add some protection for the crystal, then one of the shrapnel guards that were available at the time would have been preferable. The time can be read through the guard, and it could be easily removed when the extra protection was not required. A 1918 Borgel Forme Watchcase The Borgel case shown in Figure 47 is a forme case, that is, a shaped rather than round case. It is approximately square, but it takes a standard Borgel movement assembly that screws in through the circular aperture at the front of the case in the normal way. There is the spring-loaded split stem and pushpin for hand setting, exactly as in a normal round Borgel case. The one pictured is the only non-round Borgel screw case that I have ever seen, and the collector whom I bought it from said that he had never seen another in 45 years of collecting. The case is silver, with the FB-key Borgel trademark and Glasgow import hallmarks for sterling silver with the date letter v for the hallmarking year 1918/1919. The incised sponsor s mark is JW, which appears to be the registered mark of James Weir, jewelers and silversmiths of Buchanan Street, Glasgow. A Borgel Watch on Mount Everest Mount Everest was identified as the highest mountain in the world in 1856 by the Great Trigonometric Survey of British India. The first European to make a substantial climb of the mountain, to nearly 23,000 feet, was George Mallory during the first expedition in It was an exploratory expedition not equipped for a serious attempt, but Mallory discovered a promising route to the top via a northern approach. Mallory returned in 1922 for an unsuccessful attempt to climb the mountain and then again in 1924 for a third attempt. The expedition left Darjeeling at the end of March, trekking overland and reaching their base camp location at the end of April. Setting up the higher camps and stocking them with supplies and equipment took up May. Two attempts on the summit were planned. The first attempt, without the use of supplementary oxygen, was made by George Mallory and C. Geoffrey Bruce on June 1 but was driven back by harsh icy winds. A second attempt was started on June 2 by Edward F. Norton and Dr. T. Howard Somervell. Also climbing without oxygen, they were overcome by fatigue before they reached the summit. On June 8, 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine made a third, previously unplanned, attempt on the summit, this time using supplementary oxygen. They never returned. They were seen briefly through a break in the Figure 47. Borgel forme case. NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin November/December

7 clouds by another member of the expedition, Noel Odell, who said they were only a few hundred feet below the summit. There has been intense speculation in the mountaineering community as to whether Mallory and Irvine actually reached the summit 29 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in On this expedition Mallory wore the Borgel wristwatch shown in Figure 48. The watch was found on his body when it was discovered in It was missing its crystal and hands and was found in a pocket of Mallory s clothing. There has been speculation that it was damaged and lost its crystal during a climbing Figure 48. George Mallory s Borgel watch. maneuver, an arm jamb in a rock fissure while ascending the second step, but the lack of damage to the bezel or to the delicate enamel dial does not support this theory. There has also been speculation that the position of the hands could indicate the time at which the arm jamb took place, but the balance staff was unbroken and there is no reason to suppose that the watch stopped as a result of the crystal being lost; in fact, this is very unlikely. The most likely course of events is that the crystal was lost either as a result of a small knock that snapped it out of the bezel quite easy if caught at just the wrong angle or that it was an unbreakable plastic crystal, and the intense cold at high altitude caused it to shrink and simply drop out, a known problem with early plastic crystals. When Mallory noticed the crystal had been lost, he would have removed the watch from his wrist and put it in his pocket to protect it. An x-ray of the watch is supposed to show that the mainspring was not fully wound down when the watch was discovered, which is thought to add weight to the theory that the watch stopped as a result of some event. I have seen the x-ray and I am not sure what it actually shows, but if the watch did stop before the spring was fully unwound, it was probably as a result of the hands becoming untangled when they were broken off in the pocket. The complete lack of damage to the bezel Louisa Borgel Patents and fragile enamel dial shows that the hands were not broken as the result of a violent event, such as the watch being jammed against a piece of rock. The watch, now in the keeping of the Royal Geographical Society in London, is a typical Borgel screw-cased watch of the period. The case is silver with London import hallmarks for sterling silver and the date letter u for the hallmarking year 1915/1916. The sponsor s mark is GS, showing that it was imported to the United Kingdom by the firm of George Stockwell. It originally had radium-based luminous paint on the hands and numerals, which appears to have washed off over the years on the mountain; you can see how the remaining paint follows the outlines of some of the numerals, particularly the 2 and the 1 but also on the 8, 9, and 12. The splines on the onion crown are very well worn, indicating that the watch had been well used; because it is a manually wound watch, it would have to be wound by this crown every day to keep it going. The watch is remarkably undamaged considering its history, and it is reported that when the hand stubs were removed during its examination, it started ticking. Figure 49. Louisa Beauverd-Borgel patent. Date Number Title Translation Inventor November 24, 1916 CH Dispositif de fixation d un Method of fixing the Louisa Beauverd-Borgel fond de boîte de montre à bottom of a watchcase la carrure de celle-ci to the middle part. October 19, 1917 CH Boîte de montre Watchcase Louisa Beauverd-Borgel, Charles Rothen, and Achille Faivre July 12, 1919 CH Dispositif de fixation d une Method of fixing a Louisa Beauverd-Borgel, couronne à la tige de crown to the winding Charles Rothen, and remontoir d une montre stem of a watch Achille Faivre COURTESY OF ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY & IBG. 620 November/December 2012 NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin

8 Louisa Borgel Patents Louisa Borgel registered at least three patents. It was from the first of these, CH (see Figure 49), that I discovered her first name. The patents are shown in the table on the previous page, the first under her name only, the second and third with Charles Rothen and Achille Faivre, presumably employees of the Borgel Company. Charles Rothen s name occurs again later in the story, but this is Achille Faivre s only appearance. Note that the Swiss patent office was now showing both the original registration (Demande déposée [application filed]) date and the publication date on patents; previously, only the publication date was shown. I have used the original registration date in the table, which is usually over a year earlier than the publication date. This is usually referred to as the priority date, which is the date from which the invention is protected, when and if a patent is finally granted. Charles Rothen After collaborating with Louisa Borgel in the earlier patents, Charles Rothen went on to publish at least four patents under his own name alone. The first one, CH 88223, a figure from which is shown in Figure 50, was registered March 5, 1920, and published February 16, The case back and middle part are made in one piece like the original Borgel case. The movement is carried in a ring d, which drops loosely into the case, a tube e for the winding stem projecting from this ring and passing through a slot cut into the side of the case. The upper part of this slot is closed by a tongue of metal f soldered to the stem tube. For clarity I have colored the ring d, winding stem tube e, and tongue of metal f, which are all soldered together to form one part, in red (gray). The bezel c carries the crystal screws onto the case from the front, in a similar way to the original Borgel case, but in this design by Rothen the movement does not rotate. The bezel screws down onto the carrier ring and holds it in place in the case. This design provided an alternative to the original Borgel case, which was possibly easier to manufacture and which, because the movement does not need to rotate to be screwed into or out of the case, did not need the split stem arrangement of the original Borgel case and therefore could accommodate stem-set movements. However, the case is not as well sealed as a Borgel screw case because of the slot in the side of the case. It appears that this design was not commercially very successful because examples occur much less frequently than the original type Borgel case. A watch with one of these cases, with the screw bezel removed, is shown in Figure 51. The silver case bears the Borgel FB-key trademark, Glasgow double reclined F import mark, sponsor s mark SD for Sylvain Dreyfus, and the date letter g for 1929/1930. The slot in the side of the case and the tongue of metal soldered to the stem tube to close the slot can be seen. The movement simply Figure 50, left. Rothen Patent CH Figure 51, above. Rothen patent with bezel removed. Charles Rothen Patents Date Number Title Inventor 1921 CH Boîte de montre. Charles Rothen 1923 CH Dispositif de fixation d une anse à une boîte de montre, Charles Rothen de boussole, de médaillon etc CH Brevet additionnel subordonné au brevet principal Charles Rothen nº Dispositif de fixation...etc CH Boîte de montre hermétique. Charles Rothen NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin November/December

9 drops into the case and is positioned and secured by the screw on bezel, unlike the similar swing ring case described next, where the movement is hinged to the case. Because Charles Rothen s name appeared in 1917 and 1919, along with Louisa Beauverd-Borgel on two of the patents mentioned above, he was presumably at the time an employee of the Borgel Company. But the four patents listed below are registered in his name alone, so it looks as though around 1920 he left the company to work independently. He must have maintained a relationship with the company because they made watches to his Patent CH (discussed above) that played a part later in the story when the rights to it are purchased from Rothen by Louisa Borgel during the sale of the company. Swing Ring Cases An alternative design very similar to the Rothen case discussed above sometimes crops up with the Borgel FBkey trademark. This case has essentially the same onepiece case back and middle with screw on bezel as the Rothen design, but the bezel was carried down much closer to the tube for the winding stem, so that the tongue of metal (item f in Rothen s design) was not needed. Unlike the Rothen design, the movement does not simply lie in the case but is carried in a ring hinged to the middle part of the case. This style of case was often used for American pocket watches, where it was called a swing ring case. Figure 52 shows one of these cases manufactured by the Borgel company with the FB-key trademark. The case back is hallmarked with the London import mark and the date letter i for the hallmarking year 1924/1925. The design was made by many other makers as well as Borgel, so even if the case has the Borgel FB-key trademark, it shouldn t be called a Borgel case. These cases are sometimes referred to as semi-tropical or semi-hermetic because of a superficial similarity in appearance to a style of double watch case introduced in the 1920s called hermetic, or sometimes tropical, which is described below. The swing ring case is actually a much older design than the Rothen and the hermetic; it was patented in the United States in 1879 by Ezra Figure 52. Borgel-made swing ring case. Fitch (U.S. Patent number ). Fitch s design included a waterproof screwdown cap over the crown, but in most swing ring cases the stem is brought out through a hole in the side of the case, which Figure 53. Wilderness Catalogue. is not sealed. I have seen mention of gaskets being used with this design to seal around the winding stem tube where it passes through the case side, but I have several watches with this type of case and there is no sign of any gasket, or provision for one. These cases are not hermetically, or even semihermetically, sealed and the name semihermetic is misleading. This type of case should properly be called a swing-ring case as it was at the time it was made; see, for instance, Figure 53 from a contemporary edition of The Wilderness Catalogue by Robert Pringle & Sons. 8 The movement in the watch pictured in Figure 52 was made by Fabriques d Horlogerie de Fontainemelon (FHF), one of the big Swiss ébauche manufacturers, set up in 1793 to supply the Swiss watch industry with bare movements. In 1891 FHF registered a trademark of an arrow through an apple, a reference to William Tell, the folk hero whose defiance of the established order led to a rebellion and the formation of the Swiss Confederation, and this mark can be seen on the bottom plate when the dial is removed. Double Hermetic Cases Another style of case that is sometimes seen with the Borgel FB-key trademark has a double-case construction, with the watch placed inside a larger outer case. The outer case has no hole for the winding stem, so the crown is enclosed with the watch inside the outer case. There is no opening case back, and the outer case has a screw-down bezel that forms a hermetic seal, totally protecting the watch within. Once the bezel is unscrewed, the watch can be flipped out on a hinge to allow the movement to be wound and the hands set. The origin of this case design is a bit of a puzzle, because there are two virtually identical patents for the idea, a U.S. patent by Frederick Gruen, number U.S. 1,303,888 with a priority date of May 29, 1918, and a later Swiss patent by Jean Finger patent number CH with a priority date of January I discussed these patents and their similarities in the Letters to the Editor section of the NAWCC Bulletin of April I doubt that Finger copied the Gruen design. I think it is fairly obvious that they both came up with the idea independently. 622 November/December 2012 NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin

10 Figure 54, left. Hermetic watch. Figure 55, right. Open for winding. Figure 54 shows a watch in one of these hermetic cases made by the Borgel Company. The absence of an external winding crown is a striking feature. Figure 55 shows the watch with the bezel removed and the movement hinged out, ready to be wound or the hands set. The movement and the case of the watch shown in Figures 54 and 55 are both stamped with the initials R&S, standing for Rotherham and Sons, watch and clockmakers of Coventry, England. At one time Rotherhams made watches, but by the time this watch was made, they had stopped making watches in the United Kingdom. It appears that they had a Swiss factory, hence the Swiss-made movement stamped R&S. The R&S mark in the case is the sponsor s mark, struck when the silver case was assayed in the United Kingdom. The case was made by Borgel and was the FB-key trademark. But again, because this case design was made by other makers, including Jean Finger himself, it really shouldn t be called a Borgel case. The similarity between the 1903 new Borgel threepiece screw case (shown in Figure 18 of part one of this article) and the early case of the Rolex Oyster shown in Figure 56 is readily apparent; the threaded carrier ring is very similar I might even go so far as to say identical to the carrier ring used in both the Borgel one-piece and three-piece cases and later Taubert developments. The case back and bezel screw onto the parts of this carrier ring that project on either side of the middle part of the case in exactly the same way as in the 1903 Borgel three-piece case, and a correspondent 10 has recently sent me a photograph of a 1919/20 Borgel three-piece screw case with a Wilsdorf and Davis W&D mark, showing that these cases were supplied to Rolex. Of course by 1926, when Wilsdorf patented the Oyster case, the patents for both Borgel designs had long ex- Borgel and Rolex With the end of World War I in 1918, global trade resumed, and Rolex found that they were sending many watches to the far reaches of the British Empire. The humid tropical climate soon rusted the movements of watches in conventional cases, so a dampproof case was urgently required. In their book The Best of Time: Rolex Wristwatches: An Unauthorized History, 9 Jeffrey Hess and James Dowling noted that Rolex produced a small series of watches using the one-piece Borgel screw case in They remarked that Despite the small number of watches produced in this case style, it is a very important development in Rolex watch design. It was the first model produced by Rolex in which the case was specifically designed to give protection against some of the elements. These Borgel screw case watches were the start of a line of development that would culminate in 1926 in the Rolex Oyster. Just how much involvement did the Borgel Company have in developing the case of the Rolex Oyster? Rolex is famous for keeping its archives secret, so we don t have any direct evidence, but we do have some circumstantial evidence, including the Dowling and Hess information about the 1922 series of Borgel-cased Rolex watches, which shows that the two companies must have had some sort of commercial relationship. COURTESY OF ROLEX SA. Figure 56. Rolex Oyster case. NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin November/December

11 pired. Although Wilsdorf and Rolex were therefore under no restriction on the use of this design, the similarity is striking. And the Borgel Company, then owned by the Taubert family, did not object to the Wilsdorf patent for the Oyster case on the grounds of prior art, which they could have done, given its similarity to the 1903 Borgel three-piece case. I don t yet know who actually designed the early Oyster cases, although I recently discovered evidence as to who made them. A survey of eight early Oyster cases dating from 1927 to 1936 revealed that they all bear the Poinçon de Maître of a hammer head bearing the number 136, which shows they were made by C. R. Spillmann SA of La Chaux de Fonds and later Chêne-Bourg. This research is at an early stage, and I hope to discover more later. Although I had noted in my December 2010 W&C Bulletin article, The Rolex Screw Down Crown, the involvement of C. R. Spillman in the transfer of the screw crown patent CH from Paul Perregaux and Georges Perret to Hans Wilsdorf, as evidenced by Figure 7 of that article, I hadn t realized then that Spillman was a casemaker for Rolex. In 1929 Hans Wilsdorf of Rolex purchased the rights to one of the Taubert Company s patents, which I discuss in part three of this series. I wonder if this was in some way compensation for work done on the Oyster case or for not objecting to the Oyster patent. Borgel Cases without the FB-Key Trademark I have seen several cases that appear to be Borgel screw cases in all respects, apart from not carrying the FB-key trademark. Were these made by Borgel and somehow missed being stamped? It seems possible but unlikely. There were many other casemakers working in Switzerland at the time, and it is quite possible that these cases are copies. In that case, why aren t there more of them? I can think of two reasons. In his advertisements Borgel often makes statements along the lines of Counterfeiters will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, so he was well aware of the possibility and prepared to take action. The other reason is that although the case bowl (the combined back and middle part), the pendant/stem tube, and the bezel would be easy for a maker of ordinary watchcases to make with traditional hand tools and bow lathes, the finely threaded carrier ring and the corresponding fine thread in the front opening of the case would be something unusual for a traditional casemaker, requiring a screw-cutting lathe to make the thread on the carrier ring, and, I assume, a large special tap to cut the screw thread in the case tools not found in a traditional casemaker s workshop. Perhaps the logistics of getting these threads cut elsewhere made the cases too expensive to be commercially viable. Perhaps Borgel s machinery and production techniques meant that he was more efficient than the forgers and they couldn t compete on price. The short answer is that I just don t know. Louisa Borgel In the next part of the article I shall describe how Louisa sold the Borgel company and retired from the business in Louisa Borgel lived a long life, passing away in January 1980 in her 96th year, nearly 56 years after selling the company. References 1. The Journal de Genève, a daily Geneva newspaper published from January 6, 1826, to February 28, La Fédération Horlogère Suisse, journal of the Swiss Chamber of Watchmaking. 3. Ind icateur Davoine et Indicateur Général de l Horlogerie Suisse et régions limitrophes, annual publication-year as indicated, Gogler Publicité. 4. Captain B. C. Lake of the King s Own Scottish Borderers, Knowledge for War: Every Officer s Handbook for the Front. London: Harrison and Sons, The Horological Journal (March 1916): pp The Times London, published daily (except Sundays) since Punch, or the London Charivari (June 1918). 8. Robert Pringle & Sons, The Wilderness Catalogue (January 1931). 9. Jeffrey Hess and James Dowling, The Best of Time: Rolex Wristwatches: An Unauthorized History. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, David Read. Private communication, September 21, Acknowledgments Thank you to David R. Laurence, managing director of The Gallet Group, Inc., for the Electa advertisement in Figure 37, the Royal Geographical Society with IBG for the picture of George Mallory s watch, and Rolex SA for the image of the exploded Rolex Oyster. I also thank the watch forum websites Timezone.com and Watchuseek. com and their members for their help in gathering information for this article. 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. 624 November/December 2012 NAWCC Watch & Clock Bulletin