Glycine Watch Company Patents

This is Glycine's first patent, just after 3 years of its creation. It may look primitive but considering that during WW I wrist-watches were still not norm and trench watches, wristlets ( pocket watches converted to wrist-watches with added lugs )  just proving their practicality. Many countries deemed wrist-watches a womanly accessory, men coped a bit later. Glycine, specializing in ladies timepieces in its early years invented this clasp for strap adjustments for a better fit on wrist.

Specializing in small size movements obviously Glycine was not afraid trying new shapes and invented also the baguette shaped movements. These movements can be seen in calibers page of my website. This particular movement shape has been created to host jump hour, minute and seconds functions which was trendy in those years. A baguette shaped movement had more space than round movements to host gears. Utilized mainly in jump hour watches and ladies' wrist watches with precious stones and cases, Glycine was the trendsetter in 'Haute de luxe'  in Basel fair 1929 with timepieces fetching 10K + Swiss Francs. 

Jump hour watches were getting popular and Glycine with its baguette shaped movement integrated the jump hour, minute and seconds discs more conveniently onto baguette surface than the classic round movements. The discs would rotate to show change in time and were displayed through windows.

This is Eugene Meylan's invention. The automatic module that can be mounted on any 8,75 lignes manual winding movement and turn them into self-winding mechanism. It's a set of 2 patents CH149137 and 138. He creates a new company to manage his new manufacture 'Automatic EMSA'  and transfers the patents there. During manufacture he makes improvements and applies for further patents. This module has altogether 6 patent registers: CH149137, CH149138, CH157572, CH157573, CH160491. Very early Automatic EMSA watch examples have Pat. Appl. for numbers which are 5 digits and don't correspond to any priority or patent number and have wrongly been evaluated as marketing gimmick. In reality they are not. In Swiss chronicles the corresponding numbers 77878 and 77588 are published as applied for in 9 Jun 1931. 

This folding lever style crown was specially designed for Automatic EMSA just to set the time, rather than winding the watch. The timepiece was self-winding anyway. You can see an example in models page of Glycine with this folding lever crown, very elegant indeed.

The Airman patent, 24 hour rotating bezel and the locking crown has been patented with this register. Uncontested, this is the most important invention Glycine has made. 

The famous Glycine Airman and Combat hacking mechanisms patent. Even though it's only Glycine having used this weird and authentic hacking mechanism, it is invented by Georges Godat.  He seems to be not related with Glycine Watch Company and has an earlier patent for seconds stopping mechanism in 1947. Obviously Glycine bought the rights of the patent and used it in its timepieces. Godat fine tunes his first patent with a second patent on Dec '55  ( CH339132 ).

Klingenberg while working at Glycine has developed this technique of closing the watch-cases in a vacuumed tube so that no air would be left inside the watch-case. This way the watch was air+water+condensation proof. It would need less servicing and lubricants would not dry out quick. Time proved him right, Vacuum watches are still around and need minimum attention and are incredibly accurate.

Stopping the balance wheel by the extension of the crown when necessary to regulate time was the function of this patent. Kind of push crown in and seconds hack like in Chezard 116 movement. This is the last patent by Glycine, there are no more inventions from 1973 and onward.