Longines

Auguste Agassiz’s workshop in Saint-Imier worked the old way of the Swiss Jura: parts were made by craftsmen in their homes, and the workshop assembled and sold the finished watches, some of them as far away as the United States.^1, 2, 6

Agassiz’s nephew Ernest Francillon took over in 1852 and set about mechanising production. The factory he built in 1866, as the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland dates it (Longines dates its first movement there to 1867), brought the trades together on a riverside meadow known locally as Les Longines, which gave the company its name, and it still works on the same site.^{1, 2, 4, 6}

Francillon had every watch marked with a serial number, the Longines name and a winged hourglass, and registered the name in 1880 and the emblem in 1889. Longines says it remains the oldest watch brand trademarked in the international register of the World Intellectual Property Organization.^1, 6

Longines built instruments for aviators. It made a navigation watch with the US Navy officer Philip Van Horn Weems, and in 1931 the Hour Angle watch, inspired by Charles Lindbergh’s non-stop Atlantic flight of 1927, with which a navigator could fix a position from the stars using a sextant and an almanac. A flyback chronograph followed, patented in 1936.^1, 3, 6

Sports timing runs through the same history, from a chronograph movement of 1878 whose stopwatches were used at American racetracks to photo-finish equipment for skiing, motor racing and the Tour de France. In precision timekeeping, Longines says its high-frequency calibre 360 took the top two places in the Neuchâtel Observatory competition of 1961, and that its Ultra-Quartz of 1969 was among the earliest quartz wristwatches.¹

Inside the Swatch Group

Longines belonged to ASUAG, the movement maker that merged with SSIH in the 1983 rescue that produced the Swatch Group. Its museum in Saint-Imier keeps the company’s collections and some 800 written records from its early years.^2, 6, 8