Longines watches
by David Barth
written March 29, 2003
Longines
This high value watch is manufactured by the Swatch Group.
The Longines story starts back in 1832 when Auguste Agassiz young merchant, moved to St Imier, Switzerland and opened a small 'comptoir' (workshop).
His small company used home-workers to assemble watches that he sold. One of Auguste's sisters married Marc Francillon, a shopkeeper from Lausanne
and in 1934 they had a son, Ernest Francillon.
In 1854 Auguste turned the business over to his nephew, Ernest Francillon. Ernest realized that outsourcing the assembly did not produce the desired quality,
so in 1866 he built a factory in Les Longines, Switzerland and brought all of the watch-making skills under one roof. This was the first "Longines
factory".
The company began producing chronographs in 1879. In 1912 the company produced the first automatic timekeeping device - the wire cutting system. From that day
Longines has long been associated with time-keeping at major sporting events. Longenes has been manufacturing wristwatches since 1910. Lines include the
Conquest GMT which has a rotating bezel that can be adjusted to show the time in any time zone.
Longines developed aviators' watches and cockpit instruments. The company led the field as time-keepers to the world of sports, developing precision stop watches
for athletes. Longines was at the Olympic Games and ensured that athletes' performances were accurately recorded. But it is not merely to its top-quality range that
this watch-making firm owes its greatness and importance. By the time Longines was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the registration of the brand-name and
logotype - the winged hour-glass - in 1967, the Saint-Imier watchmakers had made 15 million watches and sold them all. For all these reasons, therefore, Longines
is a virtually inexhaustible mine of reasonably priced collectors' items, ranging from pocket chronometers to classic wrist-watches and milestones of quartz
technology.
Famous Longines watch model:
Conquest GMT: has a rotating bezel that can be adjusted to show the time in any time zone.