The famous clock is found at all the railway stations across the country, also at Goppenstein. (Photo: Martin Ruetschi/Keystone)
Martin Ruetschi / Keystone
The clock at Basel railway station tells train passengers to hurry up (Photo: Martin Ruetschi/Keystone)
Martin Ruetschi / Keystone
The clocks are produced by the company Mobatime Swiss in a village of the Emmental region (Photo: Martin Ruetschi/Keystone)
Martin Ruetschi / Keystone
An employee primes hour hands at the production facility in Sumiswald (Photo: Christian Beutler/Keystone)
Christian Beutler / Keystone
Car shuttle train station at Göschenen in central Switzerland. The cars have changed a lot since 1955 but the clock design is unchanged (Photo: Ilse Mayer-Günther/Keystone)
Ilse Mayer-Guenther / Keystone
This clock, 3.5 metres in diameter and weighing 2.2 tonnes, became the biggest of its kind in 2002 (Photo: Franco Greco/Keystone)
Franco Greco / Keystone
The clock symbol on the Apple iPad, released in 2012, was strongly influenced by the Swiss national railway station clock (Photo: Ferdinand Ostrop/AP Photo)
Ferdinand Ostrop / AP Photo
Refitting the clock at Olten railway station in 2016 after the building was refurbished (Photo: Urs Flüeler/Keystone)
Urs Flüeler / Keystone
The large clock at the Federal Railways headquarters in Bern is digital (Photo: Christian Beutler/Keystone)
Christian Beutler / Keystone
The clock at Aarau railway station is currently the largest in service. It was installed in 2010 (Photo: Peter Schneider/Keystone)
Peter Schneider / Keystone
The clocks in Switzerland's railway stations with their particular modern look have become an icon of Swiss design.
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Specialist in federal politics. Earlier worked at the Swiss national news agency and at Radio Fribourg.
Olivier Pauchard (text) and Daniel Rihs (picture editor), swissinfo.ch
The clock is the brainchild of Hans Hilfiker, an engineer with the Federal Railways, and was used for the first time in 1944. The timepiece remains eye-catching 75 years on.
Hilfiker was inspired by the Bauhaus movement, a German art school noted for a synthesising technology, craftsmanship and design aesthetics.
Instead of numbers, the clock face shows simple vertical lines as indicators and a rotating red second hand reminiscent of the traditional signalling disc of the station masters.
Despite its age the design looks as young and fresh as ever. It served as a model for the clocks on the tablet computers which Apple introduced in 2012.
In a bid to avert a legal dispute, Apple agreed to pay CHF20 million ($20.1 million) to the Swiss national railway company in exchange for the rights to use the clock design. It disappeared from iPads soon afterwards, when Apple released its iOS 7 mobile operating system in 2013.
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