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Patek Philippe: Patek Philippe & Co is a swiss manufacturer of luxury timepieces. Based in Geneva and the Vallée de Joux, the company is honored as one of the world's superlative watch manufacturers, ranking only with companies like Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantin. They are sometimes called the three kings of watch-making.
The company was founded under its present name in 1851. Its history dates back to 1839 when Polish immigrants Antoni Patek and Franciszek Czapek established their quality pocket watch manufacture in Geneva. They parted ways in 1844; in 1845 Patek employed French watchmaker Adrien Philippe, who had invented the keyless winding mechanism. In 1851, the two became full partners to found Patek Philippe & Co.
Since the early 20th century Patek Philippe has been owned by the Stern family, now headed by Philippe Stern and his son Thierry Stern.
The company built its first wrist watch in 1868, and continued innovating in this domain also, introducing e.g. the minute repeating mechanism, split-second chronograph, and perpetual calendar. In common with other Swiss manufacturers, Patek Philippe generally builds mechanical movements for automatic or manual winding. However, the company has made quartz watches, and even a digital wrist watch, the Ref. 3414. The company is unusual for its tradition of manufacturing the components for its watches itself.
At auctions all over the world Patek Philippe watches achieve record prices. The company, which maintains the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva, is itself active at auctions, sometimes driving up the demand as the company seeks to augment the collection of the museum.
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Vacheron Constantin: Vacheron Constantin is a prestigious manufacturer of swiss watches. It is also a brand in the Richemont group. The company has an annual production of about 20,000 timepieces and employs about 400 employees worldwide. Most are employed in the manufacturing plant in Geneva. The Vacheron Constantin brand sells in almost 80 countries and is distributed through 15 single-brand boutiques and over 500 other retail outlets. Napoleon Bonaparte, Pope Pius XI, the Duke of Windsor, and Harry Truman all owned Vacheron Constantin timepieces.
The company that was to become Vacheron Constantin was founded by Jean-Marc Vacheron in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1755, which makes it the watch manufacturer with the longest an uninterrupted history in the world. Vacheron was a young entrepreneur, but also a gifted craftsman. His company built the first complication in 1770, and he designed the first engine-turned dials nine years later.
Jean-Marc's son Abraham stepped into his father's shoes in 1785. He managed to steer the company through the French Revolution (1789 – 1799; Geneva only became Swiss in 1815). The founder's grandson Jacques-Barthélemy Vacheron took over the helm in 1810. He started exporting the company's watches to France and Italy.
When volume of work and extensive traveling induced Jacques-Barthélemy to seek an associate, he went into partnership with François Constantin in 1819. The company became known as Vacheron & Constantin. Constantin journeyed overseas to sell watches and open new markets, North America becoming the main market. The sentence: "Do better if possible and that is always possible" first appeared in a letter from Constantin to Vacheron dated 5 July 1819. That has remained the company motto to this day.
In 1839 Vacheron & Constantin took on Georges-Auguste Leschot as production engineer. He supervised the manufacturing operations; an inventor, Leschot's ideas revolutionized manufacturing within Vacheron & Constantin and the watchmaking industry in general. He developed the notion of standardizing movements into calibers. In 1844 the Arts Society of Geneva awarded Leschot a gold medal: highly com¬mending his pantograph, a device for mechanically engraving small watch parts and dials. This invention gave Vacheron & Constantin a tremendous advantage over other watchmakers. After Constantin and Vacheron passed away, in 1854 and 1863 respectively, a series of heirs directed the affairs of the company. At one point, Vacheron & Constantin was managed by two widows.
In 1862 Vacheron & Constantin joined the Association for research into non-magnetic materials. In 1885 the company invented the first non-magnetic timepiece, designed entirely of materials able to withstand magnetic fields. Watch construction included a balance wheel, balance spring, and lever shaft, all in palladium; lever arms in bronze, and an escape wheel – in gold.
In 1877 the company adopted as its official name Vacheron & Constantin, Fabricants, Genève. In 1880 Vacheron & Constantin introduced the Maltese cross symbol as its official logo, and still uses it today. The choice was inspired by a component of the movement that was attached to the barrel and served to limit the tension inside the mainspring.
The first Vacheron & Constantin boutique was inaugurated in Geneva on Quai de l'Ile in 1906, and it is still there today. During the Great Depression the company came into challenging times, buoyed up only by Charles Constantin's optimism. He became the head of Vacheron & Constantin in 1936; the first time a member of the Constantin family held the position of company president since the 1850s.
To commemorate the dawn of the company's third century in watchmaking, Vacheron Constantin built the Patrimony: the thinnest watch ever, only 5.25 mm (0.206 in) thick. In 1979 Vacheron Constantin (the "&" was dropped in 1970) created Kallista, one of the world's most valuable timepieces. Originally priced at US$5 million, today the worth of the watch is estimated at about US$11 million. Kallista was set with 118 emerald-cut diamonds totaling over 180 carats. Master watchmakers and jewelers worked for approximately 6,000 hours over five years to finish this watch.
In 1996 the Richemont Group acquired all of the company's share capital. In 2003 Vacheron Constantin introduced Overseas, a new line of sports watches, and Egérie, the first time a collection included ladies' watches. In 2004 the company inaugurated its new headquarters and manufacturing site in Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva.
In October 2005 the Richemont Group appointed Juan Carlos Torres as the CEO of Vacheron Constantin. In the same year, to mark the anniversary of 250 years of Vacheron Constantin, the company created the Tour de l'Ile, one of the most complicated wristwatches in the world. The timepiece has 834 parts and sixteen horological complications. It was presented exclusively at the Vacheron Constantin boutique in Geneva and sold for over US$1 million.
In 2007 the Metiers d'Art – Les Masques collection was launched: timepieces bearing minuscule reproductions of primitive art masks. Vacheron Constantin selected twelve masks from the private collection of the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva, and reproduced the masks, centering a different image on the dial of each watch in the Les Masques collection. |
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Audemars Piguet: Audemars Piguet is a manufacturer of luxury swiss watches. The history of the company dates back to 1875, when 23-year-old Jules-Louis Audemars and 21-year-old Edward-Auguste Piguet made each other's acquaintance in Vallée de Joux, the cradle of fine Swiss watch-making. Audemars made parts for movements, and Piguet was a repasseur, responsible for the final regulation of the timepiece.
The duo established the company that would become known as Audemars, Piguet et Cie. Audemars dealt with production and technical aspects while Piguet handled sales. Success did not come quickly. Although the Audemars Piguet trademark was registered in 1882, the company would only be officially founded seven years later. Members of the Audemars and Piguet families have been on the board of directors ever since; thus they have run the company either directly or indirectly continuously since 1882.
In 1889 the company established its first branch in Geneva, making its own parts and assembling watches within its own factory, under stringent supervision and quality control. From 1894 to 1899 the company manufactured approximately 1,200 watches, including some highly complex timepieces. The company continued to expand and gain in eminence after the deaths of Audemars and Piguet, in 1918 and 1919 respectively. As the company grew more successful and more renowned, its products were sought after by Bulgari, Cartier, and Tiffany & Co, who re-branded Audemars Piguet watches and sold them under their own house brands. Today, the serial number is all that serves to identify these watches as made by Audemars Piguet.
Audemars Piguet produced exceptional models, like the world's smallest minute repeater, and a pocket watch whose second hand leaps from one second to the next, instead of sweeping steadily around the dial. In 1925 the company unveiled the world's slimmest pocket watch, only 1.32 mm (0.05 in) thick. This was followed just three years later by the first skeleton watch.
The Audemars Piguet star dimmed as the 1920s ended and the 1930s started. The stock market crash and the Depression slashed progress for many Swiss companies. Then, during World War II Audemars Piguet achieved a comeback when it produced an ultra-thin chronograph – to become one of its best-known models –, at whose heart was the Calibre 2003 movement. The company's sales revived in the 1940s and 1950s. Audemars Piguet and Jaeger-LeCoultre worked together to design the thinnest automatic movement ever, which contained a 21-carat-gold rotor at the center. The joint effort of the companies, the Royal Oak, was built in 1972 and is widely believed to have to have launched the market for the stainless-steel luxury watch.
The Audemars Piguet watch group has 1,100 employees, fourteen distribution subsidiaries, and sixteen boutiques in various international locations. The three production sites, all in Switzerland, are in Le Brassus (SA de la Manufacture d'Horlogerie Audemars Piguet & Cie), Le Locle (Audemars Piguet: Renaud et Papi SA) and Meyrin (Center SA).
Audemars Piguet manufactures 26,000 timepieces annually. |
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Breguet: Breguet is one of the world's oldest luxury watch manufacturers, founded in 1775 by Abraham-Louis Breguet at the Quai de l'Horloge in Paris (on the Ile de la Cité). Owned by the Swatch Group, Breguet has been making its watches in the Vallée de Joux, Switzerland from 1976 onwards. Their most notable invention is the tourbillon, invented by Abraham-Louis Breguet himself. The brand’s watches are often recognized for their coin-edge cases, “guilloche” dials and blue “pomme” hands.
Abraham-Louis Breguet began his career as a watchmaking apprentice and as a mathematics student. After being introduced to the court and Queen Marie-Antoinette showing much interest in Breguet's unique self-winding watch, Louis XVI proceeded to buy several of his watches. Marie Antoinette contracted Breguet to make her a watch with every known function available at the time; it was to include a perpetual calendar, chronograph, clock, parachute, power reserve, repeater and thermometer. Unfortunately, Marie Antoinette never lived to see the watch – it was only finished 34 years after her execution. Before having been stolen by master-thief Na'aman Diller, the watch belonged to a collection at the L.A. Mayer Institute for Islamic Art in Jerusalem, donated as part of the David Lionel Salomons collection. |
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Rolex: Rolex SA is a swiss manufacturer of high-quality luxury wristwatches.It is the largest single luxury watch brand worldwide and produces about 2,000 watches daily.
German-born, Swiss-trained Hans Wilsdorf and his brother-in-law, Alfred Davis, founded "Wilsdorf and Davis" in London in 1905, to import Hermann Aegler's Swiss movements to England and place them in quality watch cases from various manufacturers. Jewelers bought those early wristwatches and put their own names on the dials before themselves selling the watches. The earliest watches from Wilsdorf and Davis usually bear a W&D mark inside the back of the case.
In 1908 Wilsdorf registered the Rolex trademark and opened an office in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Rolex was registered as a company name on 15 November 1915. The made-up word's origins are vague: some sources indicate that Wilsdorf intended the name of his watch brand to be easily pronounceable in any language, and short enough to fit on a watch's dial. Apparently he also thought that the word was onomatopoeic, sounding like a watch being wound.
In 1914 a Rolex watch was awarded a Class A precision certificate by Kew Observatory, a distinction which was normally granted to marine chronometers exclusively. In 1919 the company was taken out of the United Kingdom, due to excessively high costs caused by taxes and export duties on the precious metals used for the watch cases. Wilsdorf moved the company to Geneva, Switzerland, establishing it under the name of Rolex Watch Co. Later the name was changed to Montres Rolex SA and finally shortened to Rolex SA.
Upon the death of his wife in 1944, Wilsdorf established the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation. He left his entire share in Rolex to the foundation while ensuring that a part of the company's income would go to charity. The company is still owned by a private trust, and no shares are traded on any stock exchange. |
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