Anyone know the history of P. Roch Rolle Micrometers?

I have been trying to research on P. (Pierre) Roch Rolle of Switzerland and am finding next to nothing. Even wrote to the company that owns them now and they had nothing. It seems they were established by 1920 making calipers and at a later point started into the micrometer business. They had what I think was a sales department in Paris as some examples have that marking. In the mid 1950s they started using the name Etalon and continued to produce micrometers for some time.

Anyone have anything on the company history?

Thanks.

rivett608 said:

In the mid 1950s they started using the name Etalon and continued to produce micrometers for some time.

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I was going to say, "Didn't they become Etalon "? Lots of Etalon stuff had Pierre Roche (I thought it had an e on the end ?) engraved on it.

You will probably find more by searching Etalon history and going back, rather than P Roche and coming forward.

They were the best mics and calipers in the world, imo.

Tesa was apparently connected, maybe by purchase or merger ? but I never liked the slant lines. So searching for Tesa may find info for you as well.

Now it's all one big blob, with I believe Brown & Sharpe (or is it Browne & Sharp ? Could they just dump the stupid e ? tell the receiver to line up on one side or the other, sheesh. Hey, how 'bout them niners, btw ?) as the company on the title page but (imo) they don't have the same feel. Maybe my imagination but .... they just don't have that silky roll, and the dial calipers feel just a touch cheap now ? Compared to before, still good but ....

btw, if you had even a pretense of being a Real Machinist, you had a pair of 6" Etalon dial calipers in your Gerstner

I suppose this B&S "Swiss Made" semi-digital mike is related to or maybe descended from Etalon or whatever. Anyway, it is a nice tool.

Larry

I have a 1" indicating micrometer that came in a pile of junk, so unknown providence. Large prancing horse logo labeled ETALON Switzerland. A much smaller same logo with Rolle. Switzerland where the large logo is simply Switzerland. And a stamping stating "made in Switzerland by P. Roch Rolle". Rolle is a city in Switzerland.

Has anyone seen anything about dates of when they changed to Etalon? Also, I have read lots of company histories, etc. It seems strange that knowing they were around before WWII, what did they make during the war and for who? Could that have something to do with no history?

Not sure if this helps any or if you've seen this but there is a Patent assigned to Pierre Roch from the US Patent office in 1952
and this link shows him owning the Etalon trademark in 1947.
Harold

Harold Mulder said:

Not sure if this helps any or if you've seen this but there is a Patent assigned to Pierre Roch from the US Patent office in 1952
and this link shows him owning the Etalon trademark in 1947.
Harold

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The 1959 US patent in the above link reveals that Rolle was the city (near Geneva) in Switzerland where P. Roch had his home or business. The patent also lists two related Swiss patents from 1947 and 1949 that may have some helpful information. Probably they will be in French because that part of Switzerland speaks French as their first language. If it helps, Swiss government documents are probably also printed in German and Italian.

Larry

Harold, that is great, thank you! The word Etalon has 2 meanings, one is Stallion which we see on there logo, the other in old French is some standard of measurement. Today it is about optical flats,

What is really strange is my tools have a beehive on the logo instead of a horse. It also appears their dial indicators have the beehive logo and they may have been made in France. I know Rolle is a village in CH, but I wonder why the tools marked Paris are also marked P. Roch Rolle?

You know what's awful ? 1950 was just yesterday, when I was starting out Etalon was THE apex of measuring tools (still are, as far as I can see), had a toolbox full of them, and here we are in the antique machinery and history forum

Maybe the following document might help a little as well. Especially page 64 and 123.
Harold
On edit here is a link to a French forum where they discuss the history as well. might have to use Google translate.
HHM

OMG Harold, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!! That is exactly what I was looking for in the French forum, I will have to join and make contact with the one guy there. It looks the company goes back to 1897 and they started making micrometers in the early 1930s. I will have to do a lot of translating to answer my questions about the French and Swiss parts of the country and why the logo changed. Here is the French BEE Hive logo on my micrometer. Again Thankks, btw, how did you find this as it did not pop up in my searches.

I just typed in Pierre Roch micrometers in my Google search this morning and it came up on page three of the search.
The electrons must have been in favour this morning. Glad it will help you.
Harold

I wonder if it came up because you are in Canada which doesn't filter out French?

rivett608 said:

I wonder if it came up because you are in Canada which doesn't filter out French?

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Possible however I've noticed that the results change sometimes even if you put in the same search parameters.
Not sure how the algorithm works how it decides which sites to show how it finds them etc. I just find if I am serious about a search
I will do it multiple times just to see it there are new results. This latest article I inserted was not a result my first time around.
HHM

It looks like Harold has found the ideal site .
I had been going to suggest you look at the site European that was linked in this forum in the past ,"Vielles Machines a Couroies ".
or Old Flat Belt Machinery ,
My search turned up that is no longer exists
https://passion-usinages.forumgratuit.org/t2302-forum-des-vieilles-machines-a-courroies
so I explored the site from the link,
https://passion-usinages.forumgratuit.org/
a bit more and found there was a metrology forum there too where you might have been able to ask for more information
https://passion-usinages.forumgratuit.org/f6-metrologie-instruments-de-mesures-tracages
It looks like the link Harold posted is quite extensive but maybe these links will be useful for someone looking for some other European information in the future.
It helps if you can read French or are able to use an online translation program .
I would think that search engines are more likely to offer information in French or on European items when done using the likes of google.ca or google.fr or .ch sites if you can navigate in French or German .
Jim

I used to search ebay in French. German and Spanish. Before the pandemic I used to spend time in Europe and would search from there with different results as from here. Also I use to be a member of "Vielles Machines a Couroies ".

But as it has been said, that French forum looks like it has what I want but will of course bring up more questions. I can read a bit of French and did a quick read through it. There were things I'll run through the translation software to catch the finer points.

It makes one wonder, how much online would we find on the history of B & S or Starrett if we were searching from Europe?

Both Mormons and Masons use the beehive to symbolize a group of individuals working together for the common good. This perhaps hints that M. Pierre Roch was a member of one, or perhaps both, of those groups.

Note also that the French word meaning "stallion" is "etalon".

Beyond that, there is a posting on ebay of a P Roche vernier caliper etched with the circular beehive logo surrounded by text "Etts P Roch Paris", and, in a ribbon underneath the logo, "Succrs P Roch a Rolle" above a second line "Exiger la ruche, marque deposee." My French is not good enough to definitively translate, but I think that "Establishment P Roch, Paris", "Successors to P Roch at Rolle", and "Require the hive, registered trademark" are reasonable interpretations. https://www.ebay.com/itm/392272183058

And finally, since this same question was asked on both the Metrology and Antique Machinery and History forums, I'm going to cross-post my anecdotal reply from the Metrology forum:

"I've seen "P Roch" branding on French-made micrometers, dial calipers, and precision levels that were purchased new in the mid 1980s. I don't remember if the second line on the markings was "France" or "Paris", and can't rule out seeing both.

Several years later, I was chatting with one of the French mechanics at the European Space Agency launch base in French Guiana about plumbing the spin axis of a rotary table -- commonly, if incorrectly, called "leveling" the table. In accordance with launch-base rules, he had to do the actual adjustment, while I, being responsible for the spacecraft measurements, had to measure the residual plumbing error.

We chose different weapons. He used a P Roch precision level of 4 arcsecond per 2 millimeter division; I used a Federal electronic level.

We compared total-tilt results, which differed by 1 arcsecond. I must have sounded like I was either astonished or especially happy with the agreement of our measurements, because he began to brag about the level he used.

During the course of our conversation, he told me that the P Roch levels were no longer sold under that name, but under the EDA name, and that they were manufactured in a small town north of Paris."