His splendid record speaks for itself and shows the profound student, the practical machinist and brainy inventor of worldwide experience with a long list of successes to his credit.
Born in Lyss, Switzerland, in 1868, at the age of 16 he entered the machine shop of his town’s watch factory as an apprentice. There he was favored with the opportunity to become familiar with all sorts of tools and machines used in making watches.
By the age of 22 he so progressed that “all by himself” he constructed all the necessary machines to make watches and added so many important improvements, embracing such automatic devices and machines in which hands, moving from place to place, picking up pieces of work, then setting them in the right positions (operating with such perfection and precision) that he was called a wizard. One of these automatic machines would pick up blanks from a wire, set them in the machine from one to twenty-four at a time and cut the teeth of watch gearing perfectly.
Another of Bangerter’s machines would take small, smooth, round steel rods and automatically make perfectly finished pinions with pivots, shoulders and smallest holes.
An automatic trumpet of his invention would play a complete tune and was so simple in operation that a one-year-old child, by simply blowing in it, could play it.
United States Patent 543668 for a Hair Clipper, issued to F. Bangerter, San Francisco, is specified as follows:—
543668. Hair Clipper. Fred Bangerter, San Francisco, Cal., assignor, by mesne assignments, to Charles H. Greene, same place. Filed July 21, 1894. Renewed July 2, 1895. Serial No. 554,715. (No model.)
Claim 1. In a Hair Clipper, the combination of the stationary and movable plates, a pair of pivoted handles, one of said handles being hinged or connected with one of said plates so that the device may be turned to different angles, an opposing plate having its rear portion recessed and provided with rearwardly and upwardly extending curved arms, and the other handle having arms adapted to enter the recess of said plate and engage the curved arms thereof in whatever position the device is turned.
In 1892 he exhibited an automatic figure in a big department store in San Francisco which drew a complete portrait of Christopher Columbus.
United States Patent 512089 was issued to Mr. Bangerter for an “Automatic Delineating Machine,” a toy doll which would correctly write the complete alphabet. Later he so improved this figure that it could spell and talk while writing.