People Matthaus Hipp (1813-1893)

Like many pioneers within electrical horology, Matthaus Hipp also worked in telegraphy. Born in Blaureuren in 1813, the son of a baker, Hipp was apprenticed to a clockmaker in his teens. Along with many European inventors, he became interested in electromagnetism in the 1840s, but his German career suffered after the May Revolution in Baden in 1849 (official documents described him unfavourably as ‘democratic’) and he moved to Switzerland. From 1860, he was managing an electric telegraph company in Neuchatel, which also worked on networked clock systems. At his death in 1893, his electric clock company passed to his nominated successors, the engineers A. Favarger and A. De Peyer. This company – known first as ‘Favarger’ and later ‘FAVAG’ – continued producing Hipp electric clocks up until the 1970s.