A brief story of innovation
Where we discover an insightful link between the Swiss watchmaking tradition and the country’s leading role in the invention of computer peripherals
When I was adolescent I saw the Jaquet-Droz automata at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Neuchâtel. These are three little automata built in the 18th century by the Jaquet-Droz family of watchmakers. They represent an early version of modern humanoid robots, since they are fully automated and programmable. For example, one of the automata, the writer, is able to compose hand-written custom letters with up to 40 characters in length (still compatible with the length of a Twitter message today). These automata thus represent a wonderful combination of early microtechnology, programming and human-computer interaction, and for this reason they are world famous. However, what is less known, is that the same Swiss watchmaking industry also has ties to the modern world of computer peripherals, such as the computer mouse.
Besides the keyboard, the mouse was one of the first ways to physically interact with early computers. The first prototype was invented by the American engineer and inventor Doug Engelbart in the 1960s. It was however a very clunky and difficult object. But thanks to Jean-Daniel Nicoud, a professor at EPFL, and to former watchmaker André Guignard (who joined Nicoud’s lab), the first usable and well-designed computer mouse was developed in the 1970s in Lausanne. Daniel Borel, another engineer and businessman from EPFL, also joined the group, and together they produced the first series of commercially available mice in the early 1980s. The brand Logitech was born. Interestingly, the mice were produced at Dépraz SA, a watchmaking company in the Vallée de Joux.
Today, Logitech is 36 years old and covers a worldwide market. With nearly 9000 employees and multiple production sites in Switzerland, USA, Taiwan and China it creates revenue of approximately 2 billion US dollars. The company is specialised in computer peripherals like mice, but also keyboards, webcams, trackballs, speakers, among others. Recently, the CEOs of Logitech told to the press that “companies like Google have Stanford in their backyard, we have the EPFL“.
This brief story nicely shows how basic research combined with skillfull notions of business and design are key to innovation. And a bit like Steve Jobs in the United States, Nicoud, Guignard and Borel combined these skills perfectly, based on our tradition as scientists and watchmakers. But not only Logitech still exists today, also the Jaquet-Droz luxury watches are still around (even if very expensive!), as well as the three little automata that made it all happen. So it’s definitely time to go and check them out for you now! After all, the great computer scientist Don Knuth from Stanford, when visiting Switzerland a few years ago, asked only for one thing: to see the three automata in Neuchâtel.
