Paul Ditisheim

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Paul Ditisheim

Paul Ditisheim (born October 28, 1868 in La Chaux-de-Fonds , † February 7, 1945 in Geneva ) was a Swiss watch and chronometer maker .

Life

Paul Ditisheim was born the son of Alsatian watchmaker Gaspard Ditisheim and his wife Julie. With the creation of the Vulcain watch company , his was one of the wealthier families in La Chaux-de-Fonds. He received his watchmaking training from 1884 at the local watchmaking school and graduated with honors in 1887. He then did further training at various watch manufacturers, including working for a tourbillon maker in Les Ponts-de-Martel . The training also took him to Berlin , Paris and Rotherham in Coventry. He then went back to Paris. He was married to Marguérite Etlin from Paris.

Services

He was one of the most important Swiss watch and chronometer makers, who mainly researched and published on topics of precision time measurement .

In 1892 he founded the watch manufacturer Solvil et Titus in Sonvilier , and from 1895 ship chronometers were also manufactured there. Together with Charles Édouard Guillaume , Ditisheim worked from 1898 on the development and testing of temperature-independent metal alloys . He was the first watch manufacturer to use this in his chronometers. He also invented the trailer for monometallic balance maturity ( affix -Unruhreif).

In addition to marine chronometers, he also manufactured small calibers for wristwatches and ring watches, as well as watches with electromechanical contacts. He took part in many exhibitions with his watches and was very successful in building pocket chronometers , mostly with lever escapement . Among other things, he developed a marine chronometer with an exchangeable escapement system .

His chronometers won numerous first prizes in competitions at the Neuchâtel Observatory , the Kew Observatory in England and in the test series of the US Navy . Ditisheim was named Chevalier of the French Academy and a Fellow of the British Horological Institute in 1900. In 1912 he set the world record in chronometry at the Kew Observatory .

The company was converted into a stock corporation due to illness in Ditisheim in 1917 , ran into difficulties in early 1924 and then went bankrupt . The company continued to operate under new management until it was sold to Paul Bernhard Vogel in 1930 (of the wristwatches manufactured in the Paul Ditisheim manufactory after 1930 , the “Solvil” model belonged to the upper price range and the “Ditis” model to the middle price range ).

From 1925 to 1935 Paul Ditisheim worked as a partner of Paul Woog in Paris on the development of new, improved lubricants for watches. Paul Ditisheim helped epilamization achieve a breakthrough in watchmaking. Jules Andrade said that "the work of Paul Ditisheim represents the greatest advance in modern chronometry ".

In 1940 he fled the Nazis from Paris to Nice and returned to Switzerland in 1944. The following year he died in Geneva at the age of 76.

Fonts (selection)

  • Le Progrès du Réglage des Chronomètres et des Montres. Baillière et Fils, Paris 1925.
  • Louis Leroy. Journal suisse d'horlogerie, Neuchatel, No. 3, Mars 1935.
  • Précision des Garde-Temps piézo-électriques et des Pendules astronomiques. Millot Frères, Besançon 1937.
  • Inscription des pressions barométrique sur les bulletins de marche des chronomètres étudiés dans les Observatoires. Journées Internationales de Chrono- métrie et Métrologie, Paris 1937.
  • Willy Grossmann 1895 - 1936. Annales françaises de Chronométrie, 1st trimestre 1938, Millot Frères, Besançon 1938.
  • Le Spiral Réglant et le Balancier depuis Huygens jusqu'à nos jours. Editions du Journal suisse d'Horlogerie, Lausanne 1945.
  • John Harrison et la chronométrie , Paris 1926.
  • Etat actuel de la question du graissage en horlogerie , Besançon 1931.
  • Pierre Le Roy et la chronométrie , Paris 1939.

literature

  • Fritz von Osterhausen: Paul Ditisheim, Chronométrier. A. Simonin, Neuchâtel 2003, ISBN 2-88380-020-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fritz von Osterhausen: Callweys lexicon. Munich 1999, ISBN 3-7667-1353-1 , p. 70
  2. ^ Dictionnaire des Horlogers Français. Tardy, Paris 1975, p. 185
  3. ^ GA Berner: Illustrated specialist dictionary of watchmaking , electronic version. Retrieved February 15, 2013.
  4. ^ Helmut Kahlert , Richard Mühe , Gisbert L. Brunner : Wristwatches: 100 years of development history . Callwey, Munich 1983; further edition 1990, ISBN 978-3-7667-0975-2 ; 5th, extended edition (with a price guide by Stefan Muser, the owner of the Mannheim auction house Dr. Crott ) ibid 1996, ISBN 3-7667-1241-1 , p. 22.
personal data
SURNAME Ditisheim, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ditisheim, Paul Bernard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss watch and chronometer maker
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH La Chaux-de-Fonds
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 1945
Place of death Geneva