 Ducommun was established in 1849 by Charles Louis Ducommun, a watchmaker by training, who emigrated to the United States from Switzerland in the early 1840s.The Company started as a general store, providing supplies and credit to gold prospectors and other pioneers who had settled in the burgeoning pueblo of Los Angeles.At the time, California was still a territory of the United States, just on the verge of statehood with the population of Los Angeles then standing at just about 1,600.