Swiss railway clock
Design for clocks in train stations
The Swiss railway clock was designed in 1944 by Hans Hilfiker, a Swiss engineer and Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) employee, together with Moser-Baer, a Swiss clock manufacturer, for use by the SBB as a station clock. In 1953, Hilfiker added a red second hand in the shape of the baton used by train dispatch staff, giving the clock its current appearance.
Technology
The clock owes its technology to the particular requirements of operating a railway. First, railway timetables do not list seconds; trains in Switzerland always leave the station on the full minute. Secondly, all the clocks at a railway station have to run synchronously in order to show reliable time for both passengers and railway personnel anywhere on or around the station.
The station clocks in Switzerland are synchronised by receiving an electrical impulse from a central master clock at each full minute, advancing the minute hand by one minute. The second hand is driven by an electrical motor independent of the master clock. It takes only about 58.5 seconds to circle the face; then the hand pauses briefly at the top of the clock. It starts a new rotation as soon as it receives the next minute impulse from the master clock. This movement is emulated in some of the licensed timepieces made by Mondaine.
“Swiss railway clock” enters the record as design for clocks in train stations. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Swiss, railway and clock can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Swiss railway clock” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Swiss, railway and clock provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q665451. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1944 and 1953.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Swiss railway clock”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Swiss railway clock primary sources, Swiss railway clock archive and Swiss research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Swiss railway clock”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Swiss railway clock” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.