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By Bruno COLMANT, Member of the Royal Academy of Belgium
It was a time that those under thirty would not have known. On the other hand, for those in their sixties, the Lip watchmaking affair represented a decisive event, the shock of a wave of utopia that broke on the dams of post-May 68.
In 1973, Lip, a watch manufacturer in Besançon, had to file for bankruptcy due to the pressure of competition from American and Japanese quartz watches. The company was flourishing and employed more than a thousand people. In 1952, it launched the Electronic, the first electronic watch with a diode. In the early 60s, Lip had also entered into commercial agreements with Breitling.
But this time, the competition was too intense. Lip then...
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