Matthäus Hipp

Matthäus Hipp also spelled Matthias or Mathias (Blaubeuren, 25 October 1813 – 3 May 1893 in Fluntern) was a German clockmaker and inventor who lived from 1852 on in Switzerland.

[1][2] His most important, lastingly significant inventions were electrical looms, traffic signals, pendulum clocks, and the Hipp chronoscope.

After the suppressed revolution in Baden in the year 1849 his application for director of the clockmaker school in Furtwangen was rejected for political reasons, because he was regarded as a democrat.

The next part of his life career led him from Bern to Neuchâtel, where he took over the directorship of a newly established telegraph factory.

Hipp, who since 1852 lived and worked in Switzerland, but never gave up his nationality, received the honorary name of "the Swiss Edison".