a German - Swiss watchmaker, inventor, entrepreneur, royal Bavarian real secret court chamber councilor, salt works superintendent and mine director. After his school days at the end of the 1750s, the young Johann Sebastian was taken to Zurich by his sovereign, Margrave Karl Friedrich von Baden, to be guild master Hans Conrad Pfenninger, who later became bailiff of Eglisau, sent to watchmaking apprenticeship. His journeyman years led von Clais to Paris at the behest of the margraves. From 1770 he was introduced to London society by the agent of Margrave Johann Rodolph de Valltravers.
