The Longines brand is not one to be overlooked - its history and pedigree are up there with the best of them. The company started way back in 1832 under Auguste Agassiz, who formed a partnership with a watch workshop in Saint-Imier. Originally called 'Agassiz and Compagnie,' it wasn't until 1866, when the nephew of Agassiz, Ernest Francillon, took over the business and moved it to an old amalgam mill on the banks of the river Suze on a patch of land known as, 'Les Longines,' that the company was re-named 'Longines'.
Francillon was one of the first pioneers of machine-manufacturing in watchmaking, producing movement blanks, or ébauches, in his own workshop. In 1867, because of this development, he was able to entirely design his own calibre, the 20A, a mechanical movement with pendant winding. Francillon and his engineers took this movement to the 1876 Philadelphia Universal Exhibition, where they discovered just how far ahead the Americans were with their machine-manufacturing. Despite resistance from the Swiss workers, Longines continued developing their manufacturing processes in an effort to keep Switzerland at the forefront of watchmaking technology.
The product of their hard work earned Francillon and his team numerous awards and distinctions in watchmaking, and such was their recognition and success that it became necessary to manufacture authenticity markings onto their movements, and for this the winged hourglass logo was created. All their names and logos were registered with the various intellectual property registrations during the 1890's, making Longines the oldest brand name to be registered with WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organisation.
When the brand increased its market to the America's, it stepped its manufacturing processes up another level, earning it the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition Grand Prize. The development of quality control and production recording made Longines one of the first watchmakers to step into the mechanical age. By the start of the twentieth century, the factory employed 1200 people in a village of barely 8000 people.
Despite a serious lull through the First World War, and again through the great depression in the 1930's, Longines managed to pull themselves back out of the mire and begin developing calibres again. They followed the technological advancements of the era closely, producing their own chronographs, automatic movements and chronometer grade movements with good levels of success. The accuracy and robustness of the movements gave them a reputation as the professional go-to equipment, and although the Rolex Deep-Sea Special gains all the credit in the bathyscaphe Trieste dives in the 50's and 60's, it is little known that the bathyscaphe itself was fitted with Longines equipment.
Rather than fighting technical development, Longines embraced it, and the quartz revolution that knocked out so many watchmakers heralded an era of invention for them. In a collaboration with Paillard-Bolex, the Longines quartz-clock was combined with a high-speed camera to create a device that could record and time sport to within one-hundredth of a second.
Many other collaborations were founded with sporting manufacturers, including Ferrari's F1 team, and Longines have continued to provide timing equipment for a variety of sports, as well as producing elegant and robust wrist watches consistently through the years.
