Longines is a luxury watches house based in Saint-Imier, Switzerland. Founded by Auguste Agassiz in 1832, the company is owned by the Swatch Group. Its winged hourglass logo is the oldest registered for a watchmaker.
Longines is known for its 'Aviators' watches. A company director was a friend of Charles Lindbergh; after his transatlantic flight, Lindbergh designed a pilot watch to help with air navigation. Built to his specifications, it is still produced today.
Longines provided timers used at the first modern day Olympics in 1892. In 1899, Longines went to the North Pole with Arctic explorer Louis Amédée de Savoie. It was the first to use automatic timekeeping for the Federal Gymnastics, at Basel in 1912. Today, Longines remains a widely recognized name in sport watches and chronographs.
A Longines self-winding watch with several horology complications - chronograph, moon phase, day, date and month display.
The Longines' story began in 1832, when Auguste Agassiz, brother of naturalist Louis Agassiz, found a job in the hamlet of Saint-Imier,
joining Comptoir Horloger Raiguel Jeune (a trader of watch parts), in
1833 taking over the business when he and two of his associates set up a
company named Comptoir Raiguel Jeue & Cie. The venture was run on
the then-prevailing business model based on piecework by people making
or processing watch parts in their own homes for the account of a jobber
who delivered the blanks, or rough parts, and picked up and paid for
the finished ones. The company soon found ways to market its timepieces.
In 1866, Ernest Francillon purchased two adjoining plots of land at a place known as Les Longines (meaning "the long meadows" in the local dialect) on the right bank of
the River Suze in the Saint-Imier valley. Here he built a factory, to
gather the entire production under one roof.
In 1880, on 19 July, the Longines brand and logo were registered at the Swiss Federal Office of Intellectual Property, now the World Intellectual Property Organisation.
The company had by 1867 already adopted its Winged Hourglass symbol
both as a mark of quality and as a defence against counterfeiting.
Albert
Einstein and Longines were honorary guests at Antiquorum when the famous
New York auction house sold a Longines watch that had belonged to the
famous physicist Albert Einstein. The timepiece – an elegant gold model
dating from 1929 – fetched for a total of USD 596,000, thus becoming the
Longines watch that has fetched the highest price ever at auction.
Watchmaking enthusiasts and the many admirers of Albert Einstein have
been eagerly awaiting the sale of this historic timepiece. On 16 October
2008 in New York, Antiquorum auctioned a Longines gold watch dating
from 1929 that had belonged to Albert Einstein and was probably given to
the famous physicist in Los Angeles in 1931. Albert Einstein, whose
discoveries revolutionised our perception of time, frequently wore this
sober, elegant timepiece.
Longines gradually built a special relationship with the world of sport. Present in Athens in 1896, the company has been closely associated with the worldwide development of sport, timing Olympic Games fourteen times, beginning with Oslo in 1952. Its partnership drove the company to devise a variety of inventions and developments enabling it to determine and display winning times.
Longines Ambassadors
Indian Beauty Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has superbly embodied the
Longines slogan 'Elegance is an attitude' for more than ten years
He is one of the most talented tennis player of his time and combines generosity
and elegance with his charity work through the Andre Agassi Foundation for
Education
with Longines the love of excellence, performance and elegance and
devotes herself to her foundation 'Children for Tomorrow'
The Australian actor personifies the core values of Longines and
perfectly underlines the slogan 'Ellegance is an attitude'
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