The Eternal Glow from Niederwangen: An Article from Watch Around No. 40

mb-microtec. What self-luminous watches have to do with the Swiss adhesive Cementit. And how a small Bernese company became the undisputed world market leader. The story of a company that had to reinvent itself over and over again. And that today makes hands and dials glow for decades.

The man who traveled from New York to Niederwangen near Bern had a clear plan in mind: Barry Cohen wanted to produce watches, special watches that are also suitable for endless nights, and for that, he needed a very specific product from Niederwangen: tiny luminous tubes, called trigalight. These parts are so small and light that they can easily be applied to the hands and indices of watches, but above all, they can glow continuously without any external energy supply - easily for 20 years. Super-LumiNova, the classic luminous material in watchmaking, loses its luminosity within hours and must be "recharged" with light again and again.

The goal of Barry Cohen from New York, an SME in Niederwangen, still exists today. It's called mb-microtec, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, has around 100 employees, and still produces self-luminous trigalight tubes. The most famous customer - besides its own watch brand traser - is the brand Luminox, now part of the Mondaine Group, plus 40 to 50 watch brands around the world that incorporate the Niederwangen technology. But it also supplies self-luminous emergency exit signage, gun sights, fishing net markers, etc. 90 percent of the production goes abroad, everything is 100 percent Swiss Made.

Barry Cohen, founder of Luminox, initially tried in vain to reach the company's owner via email. Until someone gave him the right tip: "This is a Swiss company, you have to meet the owner personally." Which happened with success in 1989: Company boss Oskar Thüler was evidently impressed by the young New Yorker, not only did he sign a supply contract, but he also gave the penniless Cohen a loan of 80,000 Swiss Francs. Per watch, according to the deal, one franc was to be delivered in the future. After one year - reality sometimes exceeds every fairy tale - the debt was paid off.

Roger Siegenthaler, the current CEO of mb-microtec, likes to tell the story. And sees a clear constant in the company's history: "If there's one consistency with us, it's the constant reinvention."

In fact, here lies a red thread of the company - and since its founding. At the beginning were the two Bernese chemists Walter Merz and Alfred Benteli, who in 1918 founded the company Merz + Benteli. That the name might sound familiar to many people has a simple reason: Cementit, the famous Swiss adhesive, is, as one can read on the package, a product of Merz + Benteli.

The young entrepreneurs, however, started with radium luminous materials for the watch industry - when nobody yet suspected how extremely dangerous the radioactive substance can be. Almost overnight it was later banned, one had to, in the words of CEO Roger Siegenthaler, reinvent oneself. The solution: What had previously served as a top coat for the radioactive luminous paint proved to be an excellent adhesive - and as Cementit began a triumphant march into Swiss hobby rooms.

It was Oskar Thüler, the son-in-law of Walter Merz, who reinvented Merz + Benteli, so to speak, a second time and developed the trigalight tubes in 1969. The company mb-microtec - mb stands for Merz + Benteli - was founded as a sister company.

The starting material is thumb-thick glass tubes, about 150 centimeters long. In the so-called drawing process, they are stretched in length after heating until finally, a tube of 0.3 millimeters has been made from it, the inner diameter is as fine as a hair. With a kind of adhesive, the inside is coated with zinc sulfide and then filled with tritium gas. Tritium is weakly radioactive and decays into electrons, providing the necessary energy to make the zinc sulfide glow white or in any desired rainbow color. Finally, the capillaries are cut to length using laser technology and air-sealed. From the original glass tube, 2000 luminous tubes have thus been made in the end.

The first order came in 1989 from the American army, which ordered 300,000 watches of the reference traser P6500 Type 6. It was the first watch in the world with trigalight tubes. The Niederwangen company was helped by the fact that the watches easily met the strict US military specification MIL-W-46374F, among other things because they glow long enough at night. Today, mb-microtec is more than just a world market leader, the company is practically a monopolist: 90 percent is the world market share. And because constant reinvention is a red thread of the company, they are also looking for new fields of application. A project in the medtech sector, according to CEO Roger Siegenthaler, had to be dropped recently, as it turned out not to be promising for the future. But there is a second project, currently still secret, that has started promisingly. "We believe in the future," says Siegenthaler, this is shown, for example, by the fact that mb-microtec invests 20 percent of its turnover in research and development. 250,000 Swiss Francs were spent on patents, two years ago they moved into a light-flooded new building for 23 million Swiss Francs.

In it, in addition to the trigalight tubes, the traser watches are also produced, traser was the first brand ever to incorporate trigalight into watches. The clientele was initially primarily the so-called tactical community, i.e., armies, firefighters, special units, etc. In 2015, a second leg was added: the adventure and outdoor lifestyle community. There are six product families, the prices vary between 195 and 900 Swiss Francs, whereby they usually range from 250 to 499 Swiss Francs. The top models, such as the P68 Pathfinder with a built-in compass ring, have the automatic caliber 2824 from ETA installed. So far, the watch was mainly sold in gun shops and specialty stores for fishing gear or knives, but now it is increasingly found in classic distribution, for example at Sonderegger in Bern, at Casagrande in Lucerne, or online at Kirchhofer. "Nobody was waiting for traser," says traser boss Michele Starvaggi, "but slowly and steadily it's moving upwards." The production is currently at around 30,000 pieces per year.

Anyone who wants to visit the trigalight production must not only identify themselves officially, but also wear a white work coat and plastic overshoes. Meticulous cleanliness is mandatory because Tritium is slightly radioactive, so the safety precautions are strict. However, the material has nothing in common with the once-dangerous radium, as a showcase with various figures in the entrance area shows. If someone managed to break all the trigalight tubes in a watch and inhale all the gas, they would just absorb 0.004 millisieverts of radioactivity. In comparison: Eating a normal banana results in an intake of 0.04 millisieverts. And flying 6000 kilometers in an airplane results in 0.06 millisieverts absorbed.