Panerai

The shop on the Ponte alle Grazie was also, Panerai says, the city’s first watchmaking school. It moved around Florence and settled in 1926 in the Archbishop’s Palace facing the cathedral, trading as Orologeria Svizzera.^1, 3

Under Giovanni’s grandson Guido the family made precision instruments for the Royal Italian Navy, such as sights for naval combat. To make them readable in the dark it developed a radium-based luminous paint, Radiomir, a name that appears in a French patent filing of 1916.^1, 3

In 1935 the navy set up a secret programme of underwater assault craft and their crews, and Panerai tested diving watches for it, the start of its place in the history of Dive watches. The prototype that came out best was built on a base supplied by Rolex in Geneva and modified by Panerai; large cushion-shaped Radiomir watches with sandwich dials followed in regular supply.^1, 3

After the war the navy wanted watches that would last longer under water. Panerai registered the name Luminor in 1949 for a less radioactive, tritium-based luminous material, and patented the lever that guards the crown in 1956. When Guido’s son Giuseppe died in 1972, the former naval officer Dino Zei took over the navy contracts and the company became Officine Panerai.^1, 3

In 1993, to weather an economic crisis, Officine Panerai went into the civilian market with limited editions modelled on the navy’s watches, presented aboard a cruiser in the military harbour of La Spezia.^1, 3

Vendôme, the luxury holding of Richemont, bought the company on March 18, 1997, and Panerai was shown at the Geneva salon the following year. It opened its manufacture in Neuchâtel in 2002, and its own movement followed in 2005.^1, 2