Jaeger-LeCoultre

The LeCoultres had been in the Vallée de Joux since the sixteenth century, when a Huguenot refugee, Pierre LeCoultre, settled in the high, isolated valley of forges and forests. Over the generations its blacksmiths turned to small precise work, and by the eighteenth century to watch parts and music-box components.¹

Antoine LeCoultre, self-taught, built a machine for cutting steel pinions around 1830 before setting up a watchmaking workshop on the upper floor of the family forge. In 1844 he made the Millionometre, which measured parts to the micron, so that components could be made interchangeable instead of fitted one by one; the work won him a gold medal at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851.^1, 2

In 1866 Antoine and his son Elie brought the separate crafts under one roof, in a valley that otherwise worked as a web of small specialist workshops. Other houses bought the firm’s movements for their own watches, which is why Jaeger-LeCoultre calls itself the watchmaker of watchmakers.^1, 2

From 1903 Antoine’s grandson Jacques-David LeCoultre worked with the Paris watchmaker Edmond Jaeger on very thin movements. In 1931 came the Reverso, a wristwatch whose case turns over to protect the glass and leave a plain back for engraving.^{1, 2, 3, 7}

Precision stayed the theme. The firm’s tourbillon calibre took the prize at the 1946 chronometry competition, the Geophysic of 1958 was a chronometer built to resist magnetism, water and shocks, and in 1992 the company introduced its own 1,000-hour test of finished watches, links that run to Chronometry and certification.^1, 2

By 1999 Jaeger-LeCoultre was the largest company in Les Manufactures Horlogères, a holding formed in 1991 with IWC Schaffhausen and A. Lange & Söhne, which owned 60 per cent of it; the Audemars Piguet group held the rest. In 2000 Richemont bought both, in the consolidation of those years.^3, 5