IWC (International Watch Company)

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In 1868, an American engineer and watchmaker Florentine Ariosto Jones who had been a director of E. Howard & Co., in Boston, then America's leading watch making company, founded the International Watch Company with the intention of combining the craftsmanship of the Swiss with the modern engineering technology from the US to manufacture movements and watch parts for the American market. At the time, wages in Switzerland were relatively low although there was a ready supply of skilled watchmaking labor mainly carried out by people in their homes. Jones encountered opposition to his plans in French-speaking Switzerland because people feared for their jobs and the work they did at home because Jones wanted to open a factory.

In 1850, manufacturer and industrialist Johann Heinrich Moser built Schaffhausen's first hydroelectric plant and laid the cornerstone for future industrialization in Europe. He met F.A. Jones in Le Locle and showed great interest in his plans. Together, they laid the foundations for the first and only watch manufacturers in north-eastern Switzerland; The International Watch Company in Schaffhausen.