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veeb_clock_driver.webp (Copy)
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datefavag.webp
veeb_clock_driver.webp (Copy)

Swiss Favag Clock - Pre-1944

CHF 950.00

Meet Odette, a Favag electric wall clock made in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, some time before 1944. We know this because there is a written service log on the back of the clock.

Her metal clamshell case frames a soft white face, marked with bold black indices and a distinctive double bar at twelve. Black painted metal hands complete a clean, functional design that still looks remarkably modern more than eighty years on.

The log itself is a lovely detail. Handwritten in French, each entry is marked “Revisé”, running from 1944 through to 1955, several signed by the technician who looked after her. A glimpse into a long working life.

Measuring 45 cm × 7 cm and weighing 3.8 kg, she is a confident piece, ideal for a kitchen, study or hallway that deserves a clock with history. Her minute hand moves in a single satisfying step once every sixty seconds, with silence in between.

This clock retains its original FAVAG electric movement, which is running smoothly and is driven by the included VEEB Clock Driver for reliable, accurate time synchronisation. The VEEB Clock Driver is included with every clock purchase.

Meet Odette, a Favag electric wall clock made in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, some time before 1944. We know this because there is a written service log on the back of the clock.

Her metal clamshell case frames a soft white face, marked with bold black indices and a distinctive double bar at twelve. Black painted metal hands complete a clean, functional design that still looks remarkably modern more than eighty years on.

The log itself is a lovely detail. Handwritten in French, each entry is marked “Revisé”, running from 1944 through to 1955, several signed by the technician who looked after her. A glimpse into a long working life.

Measuring 45 cm × 7 cm and weighing 3.8 kg, she is a confident piece, ideal for a kitchen, study or hallway that deserves a clock with history. Her minute hand moves in a single satisfying step once every sixty seconds, with silence in between.

This clock retains its original FAVAG electric movement, which is running smoothly and is driven by the included VEEB Clock Driver for reliable, accurate time synchronisation. The VEEB Clock Driver is included with every clock purchase.

Control the angle of rotation with the yellow slider bar

A Timeline of FAVAG

  • MOBATIME 2002
    Moser-Baer introduces MOBATIME as its brand name. The Neuchâtel line ends up in Sumiswald, the Emmental village that also gave Switzerland its railway station clock. Moser-Baer
  • The clock division changes hands 1989
    W. Moser-Baer AG and J. Bosshard SA jointly acquire FAVAG's clock division in Neuchâtel. The rest of Ascom FAVAG stays where it is; it is the clockmaking that leaves. Mobatime
  • Ascom 1987
    Hasler, Autophon and Zellweger Telecommunications merge to form Ascom, a group of some thirteen thousand people built to face the coming liberalisation of the Swiss telecoms market. FAVAG becomes Ascom FAVAG. Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz
  • Hasler takes over 1932
    Hasler of Bern takes over FAVAG. The Neuchâtel works keep their name and their clocks, but the independence that began with Hipp is over. Oscahr, Université de Strasbourg
  • FAVAG SA 1927
    Favarger & Cie SA is renamed FAVAG, short for Fabrik elektrischer Apparate AG. The name on your clock dates from here. Oscahr
  • Favarger & Cie 1908
    The Hipp name comes off the letterhead nineteen years after he left. Albert Favarger runs the firm as director until 1920. A bankruptcy follows, and the business is continued under the FAVAG name. Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, Science Museum Group
  • Peyer & Favarger, Succ. de M. Hipp 1889
    At seventy-five Hipp hands the factory to his engineers Albert Favarger and A. de Peyer, and the works carry their names alongside his for the next nineteen years. He moves to Fluntern to be near his daughter, and dies there in 1893. Biography, Science Museum Group
  • Minute jumpers 1869
    Hipp patents the impulse system for daughter clocks known as minute jumpers, which steps every dial on a network forward together at the top of each minute. It is why a building full of clocks can agree with itself.
  • Electric clocks reach Geneva 1862
    Hipp installs an electric clock system in Geneva. Mother-and-daughter networks go on to spread across Europe, into stations, schools, hospitals and spa towns on every continent.
  • Fabrique des télégraphes M. Hipp 1860
    Hipp leaves the federal workshop and founds his own telegraph and electrical apparatus factory in Neuchâtel. It turns quickly to electric clock networks, and to distributing exact time down telegraph wires from 1863. Over forty years he brings more than twenty inventions to maturity, including the astronomical pendulum of the Neuchâtel observatory in 1877. Deutsche Biographie, Biography
  • Director in Bern 1852
    The Swiss government appoints Hipp head of production at the federal telegraph workshop in Bern, where he stays eight years. He was German, and remained so all his life, which did not stop the Swiss calling him their Edison. Wikipedia, Biography
  • The chronoscope 1850
    Hipp builds an instrument that measures intervals to a thousandth of a second, timed not by a pendulum but by a metal reed vibrating a thousand times a second. Armies used it to clock projectiles. Psychologists used it to try to measure the speed of thought. Science Museum Group
  • The Hipp toggle 1843
    A miller's son from Blaubeuren, lame since a childhood fall, apprenticed to a clockmaker at sixteen, Matthäus Hipp shows his toggle mechanism at an exhibition in Berlin, described only as a clock with its movement below the pendulum. He had worked out the principle by 1834 and fitted it to a clock in Reutlingen the year before. Sotheby's, Wikipedia