Watch Manufacturer
(meaning "watchmaking manufacturer") is a French language term of horology that has also been adopted in the English language as a loanword. In horology, the term is usually encountered in its abbreviated form ''manufacture''. This term is used when describing a wrist watch movement or watchworks fabricator which makes all or most of the parts required for its products in its own production facilities, as opposed to simply assembling watches using parts purchased from other firms. Definition The ''Dictionnaire professionnel illustree de l'horlogerie'' (The Illustrated Professional Dictionary of the Watchmaking Industry) defines ''manufacture'' as follows: In the Swiss watch industry the term ''manufacture'' is used of a factory in which watches are manufactured almost completely, as distinct from an ''atelier de terminage'', which is concerned only with assembling, timing, fitting the hands and casing. The concept of ''manufacture'' in the Swiss watch making industry refers to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Watchmaker
A watchmaker is an artisan who makes and repairs watches. Since a majority of watches are now factory-made, most modern watchmakers only repair watches. However, originally they were master craftsmen who built watches, including all their parts, by hand. Modern watchmakers, when required to repair older watches, for which replacement parts may not be available, must have fabrication skills, and can typically manufacture replacements for many of the parts found in a watch. The term clockmaker refers to an equivalent occupation specializing in clocks. Most practising professional watchmakers service current or recent production watches. They seldom fabricate replacement parts. Instead they obtain and fit factory spare parts applicable to the watch brand being serviced. The majority of modern watchmakers, particularly in Switzerland and other countries in Europe, work directly for the watchmaking industry and may have completed a formal watchmaking degree at a technical school. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Cartier (jeweler)
Cartier International SNC, or simply Cartier (; ), is a French high-end luxury goods conglomerate (company), conglomerate that designs, manufactures, distributes, and sells jewellery, leather goods, and watches. Founded by Louis-François Cartier (1819–1904) in Paris in 1847, the company remained under family control until 1964. The company is headquartered in Paris and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Swiss Richemont Group. Cartier operates more than 200 stores in 125 countries, with three Temples (Historical Maisons) in London, New York City, New York, and Paris. Cartier is regarded as one of the most prestigious jewellery manufacturers. ''Forbes'' ranked Cartier on its Most Valuable Brands list as 59th in 2018 and 56th in 2020, with a brand value of $12.2 B and revenue of $6.2 B. Cartier has a long history of sales to royalty. King Edward VII referred to Cartier as "the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers." For his coronation in 1902, Edward VII ordered 27 tiaras ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Jaquet-Droz
Pierre Jaquet-Droz (; 1721–1790) was a watchmaker of the late eighteenth century. He was born on 28 July 1721 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, in the Principality of Neuchâtel, which was then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. He lived in Paris, London, and Geneva, where he designed and built animated dolls known as Automaton, automata to help his firm sell watches and mechanical caged songbirds. Notable works Constructed between 1768 and 1774 by Pierre Jaquet-Droz, his son Henri-Louis (1752-1791), and Jean-Frédéric Leschot (1746-1824), the automata include ''The Writer'' (made of 6000 pieces), ''The Musician'' (2500 pieces), and ''The Draughtsman'' (2000 pieces). His astonishing mechanisms fascinated the kings and emperors of Europe, China, India and Japan. Some consider these devices to be the oldest examples of the computer. ''The Writer'', a mechanical boy who writes with a quill pen upon paper with real ink, has an input device to set tabs, defining individual letters written by the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Jaeger-LeCoultre
Manufacture Jaeger-LeCoultre SA, or simply Jaeger-LeCoultre (), is a Swiss luxury watch and clock manufacturer founded by Antoine LeCoultre in 1833 and is based in Le Sentier, Switzerland. Since 2000, the company has been a fully owned subsidiary of the Swiss luxury group Richemont. Jaeger-LeCoultre is regarded as a top-tier Richemont brand. It has hundreds of inventions, patents, and more than one thousand movements to its name, including the world's smallest movement, one of the world's most complicated wristwatches (Grande Complication), and a timepiece of near-perpetual movement (the ''Atmos clock''). History Early history The earliest records of the LeCoultre family in Switzerland date from the 16th century, when Pierre LeCoultre (circa 1530 – circa 1600), a French Huguenot, fled to Geneva from Lizy-sur-Ourcq, France to escape religious persecution. In 1558, he obtained the status of “inhabitant” but left the following year to acquire a plot of land in the Vallé ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
International Watch Company
IWC International Watch Co. AG, also known as IWC Schaffhausen, is a Swiss watch manufacturer located in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Originally founded by American watchmaker Florentine Ariosto Jones in 1868, IWC has been a subsidiary of the Swiss Richemont Group since 2000. IWC is best known for producing luxury pilot/aviation watches and using titanium in watchmaking. In 2018 IWC was recognized by the WWF for its environmental efforts and received an "Ambitious" rating; placing first amongst fifteen other Swiss watchmakers. History Creation In 1868, American engineer and watchmaker Florentine Ariosto Jones (1841–1916), who had been a director of E. Howard & Co., in Boston founded the International Watch Company.Watches from IWC, at page 9. He planned to assemble watches in Switzerland and import them into the United States. At the time, wages in Switzerland were relatively low although there was a ready supply of skilled watchmaking labor, mainly carried out by people ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Hublot
Hublot () is a Swiss luxury watchmaker founded in 1980 by Italian Carlo Crocco. The company operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of the French luxury conglomerate LVMH. History A scion of the Italian Binda Group dynasty, best known for making Breil watches, Carlo Crocco left the company in 1976, to start a watch company. Moving to Switzerland he formed MDM Geneve and set about designing a watch that he named the Hublot after the French word for "porthole". The watch that he created featured the first natural rubber strap in the history of watchmaking. It took three years of research to create the strap. Despite failing to attract a single potential customer on the first day of its debut at the 1980, Basel Watch Fair, the watch quickly proved to be a commercial success with sales in excess of $US2 million in its first year. The Jean-Claude Biver era Crocco, preoccupied by his own design work and many activities for the Hand-in-Hand Foundation, a charity helping deprived c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Hamilton Watch Company
The Hamilton Watch Company is a Swiss manufacturer of wristwatches based in Bienne, Switzerland. Founded in 1892 as an American firm, the Hamilton Watch Company ended American manufacture in 1969. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, the Hamilton Watch Company eventually became integrated into the Swatch Group, the world's largest watch manufacturing and marketing conglomerate. Early history Hamilton succeeded three watch firms manufacturing timepieces in the same facilities in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, US, including the Lancaster Watch Company. The precursor to the Hamilton Watch Co., the Lancaster, Pennsylvania based Keystone Standard Watch Co., was started by Abram Bitner in 1886 with the purchase of Lancaster Watch Company's factory. Keystone manufactured watches featuring a patented "Dust Proof" design that used a small mica window to cover the only opening in the plate of the movement. Keystone existed until 1891 when the company was sold to Hamilton Watch ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Moritz Grossman
Moritz Grossmann is a manufacturer of luxury wristwatches based in Glashütte, Germany. Annual production is approximately 200 pieces. History During the financial crisis of 2007-08 Christine Hutter (who had previously held positions at Wempe, Maurice Lacroix, Glashütte Original, and A. Lange & Söhne) founded her own luxury watch brand, Moritz Grossmann, after acquiring the right to use the name of 19th century founder and director of the German School of Watchmaking, Karl Moritz Grossmann. Initially the company operated from her personal residence in Dresden, but shortly afterwards moved into a former hardware store in Glashütte. In 2010, having grown to 16 employees, the company released its first production model and acquired land to build a new factory. By 2013 the construction was complete. Models The Benu Tourbillon, designed by Jens Schneider, was the world's first watch to use a human hair as an integral part of its movement. Other models as of 2015 are the Benu, Benu P ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Girard-Perregaux
Girard-Perregaux SA () is a luxury Swiss watch ''manufacture'' with its origins dating back to 1791. Since 2011, the Swiss holding group of Girard-Perregaux, Sowind Group, has been a subsidiary of the French luxury group Kering. Headquartered in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, the company opened the Girard-Perregaux Museum near its headquarters in Villa Marguerite in 1999. It is best known for the historic Tourbillon with three gold bridges, which was awarded a gold medal at the 1889 International Exposition in Paris soon after the launch of the watch. Other notable models from the company include the collection 1966, Vintage 1945, and models such as Tri-Axial Tourbillon and Laureato, an icon inspired from the 70s. History Early history In 1791, watchmaker and goldsmith Jean-François Bautte signed his first watches. He created a manufacturing company in Geneva, grouping for the first time ever all the watchmaking facets of that time. This included the engineering of th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Gallet & Co
Gallet may refer to: People with the surname * Anne Gallet, a Swiss harpsichordist and musicologist * Charles Gallet (1875-1951), French politician * Léon Gallet (1832–1899), watchmaker and philanthropist, patriarch of the Gallet Watch Company * Louis Gallet (1835–1898), a French writer of operatic libretti, plays, romances, memoirs, pamphlets * Luciano Gallet (1893–1931), a Brazilian composer, conductor and pianist * Mathieu Gallet (born 1977), French high-ranking civil servant Other * Gallet & Co., a historic Swiss watch and clock manufacturer * Air Gallet, a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up arcade game developed by Gazelle * Gallet Clamshell, the world's first water resistant chronograph wristwatch * Gallet Flight Officer, the world's first time zone calculating wristwatch * CGF Gallet, a French company producer of the SPECTRA combat helmet and the F1 helmet for firemen * Le Gallet, a commune in the Oise department in northern France * small splinters of stone ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Frédérique Constant
Frédérique Constant SA is a Swiss manufacture d'horlogerie, ''manufacture'' of luxury good, luxury wristwatches based in Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva. It was acquired in 2016 by Citizen Holdings of Tokyo, Japan. The company was established in 1988 by Peter Stas and Aletta Stas-Bax (a Dutch people, Dutch married couple). Before the sale to Citizen, Frédérique Constant S.A. (corporation), SA was owned by Union Horlogère Holding Besloten vennootschap, B.V., which also owned Alpina Watches International SA, and Ateliers deMonaco, Ateliers deMonaco SA, and was, in turn, owned by Frédérique Constant Holding SA. History The company was founded in 1988 by Aletta Stas-Bax, Aletta Francoise Frédérique Stas-Bax and Peter Constant Stas (a Dutch married couple). Its name is derived from the names of great-grandparents of each founder – specifically Frédérique Schreiner (1881–1969) and Constant Stas (1880–1967), the latter of whom founded a company producing watch dials in 1904. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |