Timepieces Trade Market

Longines : History

He was a man who seemed to embody the pioneering spirit.
On 14 August 1832, this 23-year-old businessman set himself up as an active partner of the "Comptoir Raiguel Jeune' watch dealership in the Jura town of Saint-Imier.
His name: August me Agassiz.
These establishments for the production of handmade watches, known as comptoirs, bought in movement-blanks and had the finishing and assembly done at home by local watchmakers, most of whom also ran small farms.
The comptoirs then looked after the marketing and sale of such watches.
The business went so well that the other owner was bought out in 1847 and the company renamed Comptoir Agassiz & Cie.
Health problems forced Agassiz to look for a suitable successor.
He soon found one - his nephew Ernest Francillon.
By 1854, the 20-year-old Ernest was already acting as the manager responsible for the comptoir, with his uncle standing by in an advisory capacity.
Despite the flourishing business, Francillon realized that the comptoir-watchmaker concept was already out of date.
It lacked an established System of quality control, timely customer service and an available stock of spare parts.
None of these was conceivable so long as each watch was individually made up from hand-crafted parts.
The only solution was to institute proper series production.
And so it came about.
In 1866 a unique opportunity presented itself.
A site called "Les Longines" (the long meadows) was for sale on the banks of the river Suze.
It was ideal for a factory because of the almost inexhaustible supply of hydraulic power.
All that was needed was the right machines.
Since there was nothing suitable on the market at that time, the creative and farsighted Francillon unhesitatingly developed his own.
It was with their help that the first precision watches signed "E. Francillon, Longines, Suisse" were produced.
Some were to be shown at the World Exhibition in Paris.
Success was soon to follow, to the extent that by 1874 Francillon had to take tough action against imitators.
He made it quite clear in writing that his watches and movements could be unmistakably identified.
In 1880 Francillon secured official protection for his "Longines" trade-name from the federal office for intellectual property in Bern.
In 1889 he also had an unforgettable trade-mark registered - the winged hourglass.
In the days when trade-marks were not yet taken for granted in the watch industry, this was also a pioneering move.
The winged hourglass anticipated what was to become a company speciality - the manufacture of pilots' watches.
By 1879, Francillon had the development and production of chronographs under way.
Longines went into this demanding area of watchmaking with intense commitment.
The legendary Longines manufactured calibers such as the 13.33 Z of 1910, the 13 ZN of 1936 and the 30 CH of 1947, are today highly valued and sought-after by collectors of wristwatches.
Moreover, the first Longines wristwatches had already been available since around 1905.
One remarkable timepiece resulted from an association with Charles A. Lindbergh, who had flown his "Spirit of St. Louis" across the Atlantic on 21 May 1927.
The so-called Hour-Angle watch that made navigation easier for many a pilot on trans-oceanic flights was available from 1932.
In addition to this, Longines can claim to be a pioneer of electronic timekeeping, using high frequency quartz regulators.
In 1953, the company presented its first portable quartz clock.
The following year this clock set the absolute precision record at the Neuchâtel observatory.
In 1970 Longines took part, with other watch manufacturer, in the launch of the first Swiss quartz wristwatch - the "Beta 21".
1972 saw the presentation of the first wristwatch with digital liquid-crystal display (LCD) indication, jointly developed with Texas Instruments and ETA.
Today, Longines is part of Switzerland's Swatch Group.