Leclanché Capacitors

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Leclanché is a household name in Switzerland. Producer of electrical storage components — first dry cell batteries then capacitors — the company grew up in the wave of rapid industrialization known as the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914), a time when new technologies — electrical power and telephones — were transforming the global geo-economic landscape. Electricity was the future, and Switzerland, with its rivers and lakes, had a reliable source of hydroelectric power. By the turn of the century, newly constructed dams and power plants were fueling the Swiss rise from agrarian roots to leading producer of electrical equipment.

Leclanché Capacitors was founded in 1919, in the town of Yverdon in western Switzerland. Employing a handful of workers, the workshop was added to the battery factory to make paper-based capacitors for the Swiss telephone system. Over the next 50 years, as electronics developed and global demand grew, Leclanché Capacitors came into its prime. By the mid-70s, the little workshop had grown into a world-class division with a stellar reputation for quality, employing over 80 people and exporting all over the world.

The next 30 years of stiff global competition, however, took its toll; by 2004 the workforce dwindled to 16. A management buyout in 2005 resuscitated the flagging division, and for the next 14 years Leclanché Capacitors thrived, holding its own in a highly competitive international market. Until 2018, when it was bought out by a multinational corporation, up to 26 people clocked in at the factory.

Economic cooling was followed by the global Covid-19 pandemic, which inevitably sealed the factory’s fate. In August 2020 — after 102 years of production in the same building, in the same town — the decision was announced to close the production site. The workers lost their jobs, the equipment was carried off or scrapped, and in 2021, the doors were closed.  

These photos are a tribute, not only to the last generation of workers, but to all Leclanché Capacitor workers since 1919. It is a tribute to all workers, everywhere — real people with real lives, who labor to make a product and earn wages to support their families.