The Hipp Chronoscope - continued...

One of the rare Hipp chronoscopes surviving from this period is kept at the Utrecht University Museum. In the spring of 1849, this chronoscope was delivered to the Physical Institute at Utrecht University. Along with the instrument, Hipp sent a drop apparatus and a handwritten letter with instructions. In his letter, Hipp claims that his chronoscope is able to measure the 500th part of a second. He also describes how to start and stop the time measurements properly. In addition, Hipp reports on test results from experiments with falling bodies he had conducted together with Oelschläger.

Utrecht University Museum

In the late 1840s and early 1850s, Hipp gave public lectures on the chronoscope and other electromagnetic devices of his production, e.g., a writing telegraph, in Munich, Vienna, Regensburg, and other cities. During this period, Hipp sold chronoscopes to physical institutes in England, Scotland, and Switzerland. At the same time, several publications about the Hipp chronoscope appeared in scientific journals. Physicists such as Adolph Poppe and Carl Kuhn discussed the precision of time measurements made with the Hipp chronoscope. Other descriptions of the instrument were published in introductory text books dealing with physics and applied electricity, e.g. Wilhelm Eisenlohr's Lehrbuch der Physik: zum Gebrauch bei Vorlesungen und zum Selbstunterrichte (1852) or Théodore Du Moncel's Exposé des applications de l'électricité (1853). In 1852, Hipp was offered a job as machine supervisor (Maschinenwerkführer) at the newly established Swiss Federal Telegraph Workshop in Bern. He was quickly promoted to chief of the entire operation. Although it meant shifting his focus from clock mechanics to telegraphy, he continued with his chronoscope trade.