Swiss company of chronometry

Founded in 1973 in its current structures, the COSC is, under the terms of the civil code Suisse, a non-profit-making association, recognized public utility. It was creates by five clock making cantons (Bern, Geneva, Neuchâtel, Soleure and Vaud) like by the Federation of Swiss clock making industry. It gathers laboratories which had been established independently from/to each other as of the end of the 19th century.

The goals of the COSC are: • To measure and control the precision of clock making movements, to decree the official title of stop watch to them.

• To promote the stop watch and to undertake any legal action aiming to defend and protect this title on the international plan.

• The COSC does not manufacture the stop watches, it certifies only that the clock and watch makers set up this strong added value at their products and it attests that they can claim to carry this prestigious title. The Official Offices of control (BO) are today the three laboratories of the COSC. Located at Bienne, Geneva and the Locle, they have the role of testing the movements deposited by the manufacturers.

They individually obtained an accreditation in the capacity as laboratories SCS (Swiss Calibration Service) by METAS (federal Office of metrology and accreditation). The three BO have equipment of point, designed in-house by the engineers of the direction. The specificity of the needs is such as all the instruments of the BO had to be developed to measure, because nothing exists on the market of the instrumentation.

The direction of the COSC, based with La Chaux-de-Fonds, coordinates the operation of the BO and provides them the equipment of measurement and management of the results, of which it ensures maintenance.

It enacts the regulations of control applicable to the various types of movements deposited, it develops the equipment and methods of measurement of the BO and undertakes all the actions relating to marketing, the communication and the defense of the stop watch in the broadest sense of the term.

Methods

The BO are, to our knowledge, the only laboratories in the world to apply on an industrial scale this standard and to deliver more than 1 ' 000 ' 000 of official certificates of stop watch per year. However, that accounts for only some 3% of the Swiss production clock making, which underlines the exceptional character of the stop watch. With this intention, they strictly apply the conditions of tests described by the standard.

It is fundamental to recall that these tests do not have strictly anything to see with a simulation of behavior to carrying.

They are static tests in laboratory, applied to movements and not to finished watches.

The results obtained give an image " photographique" walk of a movement at a given time and attest its intrinsic precision. However, by their severity, these tests are very selective and only movements of very high-quality can claim to make a success of them. It is thus about an examination of excellence, even if the behavior with carrying prizes winner remains directly depend on the carrier itself. To obtain the certificate of stop watch, a movement must not only be made up of the components of the best quality which is, but have still made the object of the particular care of the best clock and watch makers and rulers, during his assembly. It is thus a product with very high added value, which is distinguished clearly from the clock making production of current quality.

What measures one in the laboratories of the COSC

The daily measurement made by the COSC on each movement which is subjected to him consists in determining a state (time posted by the movement) compared to a time of reference. Contrary to an instantaneous measurement of walk using a chronocomparator (measuring instrument used by the clock and watch makers, which indicates a foreseeable behavior in the time, but does not take account of the variation of driving force and the loss of amplitude which results from this, as well as disturbances related to the negligible defects of geometry of the gears), the measurement by differentiation of states makes it possible to integrate the behavior of the movement in time.

Today, the COSC controls the movements which are entrusted to him with systems of industrial Vision, supplied with Cartesian robots of gantry type.

The sensor used is a cell CCC coupled to an optics, which detects the position of the needle of seconds (black) on the division of the dial (white). A system of benchmarks allows an absolute centering of the image (by translation and rotation of axes) and makes measurement insensitive with the tolerance of position of the movement under the camera. Each BO uses a base of time made up of 2 atomic clocks synchronized over time GPS. The seizure and the calculation of the data are entirely automatic, by the means of a computer. What is this with the Juste that a stop watch? One will thus define the stop watch as follows: A confusion exists, even in the nontechnical mediums of the clock industry, as for the terminology.

The stop watch term often is allotted, wrongly, to time instruments provided with an additional mechanism activated by push-buttons and making it possible to measure the duration of an event.

Such an instrument is a stop watch or chronoscope. It can obviously, in so far as it satisfies the criteria of the standard, carry the title of stop watch.

The COSC still added, in its technical payment, an additional condition, the permanent posting of the second.

A stop watch is a watch of utmost precision, able to post the second, whose movement was tested during several days in various positions and at various temperatures, by a neutral official organization (COSC). Each stop watch single, is identified by a number engraved on its movement and a number of certificate issued by the COSC.

Each movement is controlled individually according to a program of tests specific to each kind, during several consecutive days in five positions and at three temperatures.

Each movement is measured individually. Any watch sold under name stop watch is provided with a certified movement.

See too

Foundation Quality Fleurier the first qualitative clock making certification of finished watches.

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