|
|
|
|
 |
|
STORY NG TJENG JAW
1841 – 1916
It was 1860s America, and the three big watch companies - Elgin, Howard and Waltham - together produced more than 100,000 pocket watches. They dominated the domestic market. Pocket watches were meant only for the wealthiest, but the middle class was beginning to get interested.
Florentine Ariosto Jones had worked as a director in F. Howard & Cie, a watch company established in Boston, Massachusetts. Jones understood that to be successful in the American market, there was a need to solve the problem of the expensive and less than efficient production method of the US.
Jones was a forward-looking visionary, if a little over-ambitious. He observed keenly an attempt by one of the industry leaders, Aaron Lufkin Dennison, to benefit from the lower Swiss wages and watchmaking know-how then. He was, however, impervious to Aaron's eventual failure.
By the age of 27, Florentine had travelled to Switzerland to manufacture high-quality movements and watch parts for the American market using Swiss technology, and where wages were comparatively low.
There, Florentine met an enterprising watchmaker and industrialist from Schaffhausen, Johann Heinrich Moser. Johann Heinrich had already manufactured pocket watches for the Russian Tsars. He had built a hydroelectric plant on the banks of Rhine in Schaffhausen that was equipped with a series of transmission wheels and long steel cables. It generated low-cost energy but had too few customers. Seizing the opportunity, he proposed that Jones set up his factory in Schaffhausen to take advantage of his energy supply.
In 1868 or 1869 (there is some argument over the exact year), Jones founded the International Watch Company (IWC), a company which is still making high quality Swiss watches today.
Jones was a very good watchmaker. The first pocket watches produced in Schaffhausen with his own calibre (above) has a wealth of advanced and unique technical features: a bimetallic cut balance to compensate for temperature fluctuation, a hand-bent Breguet balance spring, a three-quarter plate and a precision adjustment mechanism with an elongated index tail.
Very quickly, Jones was able to improve his production department with the addition of machinery imported from America or developed by himself. At the time, the only movement the factory produced was the aforementioned Jones 44mm calibre. IWC had achieved an impressive production quantities of 10,000 watches per year by the early 1870s.
While Jones was a serious watchmaker who had set a high standard, he failed to foresee a series of unfortunate developments which crushed his financial plan. In the midst of a revolt by disgruntled stockholders and on the verge of brankruptcy, Jones was forced to sell his company to Schaffhausen Commercial Bank in 1875.
While Jones might have failed financially, his sincere and serious effort in maintaining quality left an indelible mark in IWC. His product philosophy Probus Scafusia, meaning 'Good, Solid Craftsmanship from Schaff-hausen', is still the company motto today.
IWC Chief Executive Officer Georges Kern comments that Florentine Ariosto Jones was "not only a courageous visionary and entrepreneur," he "was also a man with a highly developed sense of quality."
This is the reason why IWC watches today still carry the stamp Probus Scafusia.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
