Chapter 1: Switzerland, 1946
Sir Winston Churchill makes a speech about the future of Europe at Zurich University. The Geneva-New York commercial airline is proudly inaugurated.
That same year, Léon Mouttet, Alexandre Pesci's grandfather, creates LEMO.
He leaves his native Jura, an area known as the birthplace of Swiss watchmaking and settles down in Morges, by the Lake of Geneva, only a few kilometers from where LEMO’s headquarters are now located. At first, he runs a grocery store, then a photography business, before switching back to his original profession of precision mechanic and starts renting an apartment with a 50 m2 workshop. The site, located in the town centre is called “La Cour des Miracles” (Court of Miracles), which certainly played a role according to an ex-employee. “This is LEMO’s secret: miracles happened here, there was indeed magic around.”
Picture of La Cour des Miracles: LEMO's story started on the first floor where you see the blue curtains.
Swiss Post, Telecommunications, Electronics, and Automotive industries equipped with LEMO connectors
In those early days, LEMO was truly a family business: Léon produced components in the workshop which he assembled with his wife Hélène at the lounge table. Their daughter Josée also gave a hand. She was 13 and had no idea she would become LEMO’s president three decades later. Nor that her son would become its third CEO.
Thanks to an innovative manufacturing process, LEMO developed contacts in the form of rivets in a single piece of molybdenum. This would ensure extraordinary resistance: with hardly any wear or deformation, even after millions of operations. They equipped primarily the Swiss Post and Telecommunications (relays, contactors, call centres). Electronics (radio, television, radars) and the automotive industry (magneto switches or circuit-breakers) were also going to use them.
Did you know that our company's name is a contraction of the founder’s name: Léon Mouttet ?
However, Léon Mouttet’s creativity did not end with simple electric contacts. His inventive mind filled the family apartment with a multitude of sketches and technical drawings. He patented and produced control devices for the watchmaking industry, from dynamometers to measure the force of springs to precision tools for assembling watch movements.