Montblanc International GmbH is a German manufacturer of writing instruments, watches, jewellery and leather goods, often identified by their "White Star" logo.
Founded by the stationer Claus-Johannes Voss, the banker Alfred Nehemias and the engineer August Eberstein in 1906, the company began as the Simplo Filler Pen company producing up-market pens in the Schanzen district of Hamburg. Their first model was the Rouge et Noir in 1909 followed in 1910 by the pen that was later to give the company its new name, Montblanc. The Meisterstück name (English: "Masterpiece", the name used for export) was used for the first time in 1924, for the top lines of fountain pens. Today, the Montblanc brand is on other goods besides pens, including watches, jewellery, fragrances, leather goods and eyewear.
The company was acquired by Dunhill in 1977, following which lower price pens were dropped and the brand was used on a wide range of luxury goods other than pens.
Today Montblanc forms part of the Richemont group. Its sister companies include luxury brands Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Chloé, and Baume et Mercier. Montblanc is owned, through Richemont, by the South African Rupert Family.
Nicolas Rieussec (July 20, 1781 – June 18, 1866) was a French watchmaker.
The Rieussec family’s birthplace was the town of Lespinassière. Nicolas was the son of Joseph Rieussec, a merchant born in the 18th century in Lespinassière, in Languedoc, then one of the largest provinces in the kingdom of France.
He was named a Watchmaker to the King in a royal warrant dated January 31, 1817.
“On this thirty-first day of January, eighteen hundred and seventeen, the King at Paris, having been made fully aware of the good life and moral conduct of Sieur Nicolas Mathieu Rieussec, and of the distinguished reputation he has acquired in his profession of Watchmaker, desires to confer upon him a mark of his favour and of the protection with which he honours him; for this purpose, His Majesty has granted and does grant him the title of his Watchmaker so that said Sieur Rieussec can enjoy all the honours, prerogatives and other benefits thereunto appertaining; His Majesty desires and intends that he may use said Title at all gatherings and on all public documents […].”
The decade of the 1820s was one of the most prosperous in Nicolas Mathieu Rieussec’s life. It certainly did get off to an auspicious start. September 1, 1821, found Rieussec at the Champ-de-Mars in Paris - not as a race spectator come to watch the Arrondissement de la Seine race, but as a watchmaker testing a “chronometer intended to consistently measure the time horses take to travel the prescribed race distances - not only the winning horse, but also all those that cross the line after it.
In the minutes of its meeting held October 15, 1821, the French Academy of Sciences reports on Rieussec’s invention, which he had presented to them two weeks earlier and which was examined by two of its members, Breguet and Prony. As Rieussec later wrote to Comte Siméon, it was this prestigious company that was the first to call his invention the “Chronograph with Seconds Indicator.” The expression caught on to such a point that it replaced “chronometer” and “timer.” Then and for all time to come, the term became “Rieussec’s chronograph.” Having the Academy’s minutes is no small advantage. They provide a description of the chronograph and its operation that is among the most comprehensive in existence:
In summary, on October 14, 1821, Rieussec presented his invention to the Academy of Sciences, which christened it a chronograph. The term was particularly well chosen: chronograph comes from the Greek words chronos and graphin, which means “that which writes time”. This system works as follows: a nib places a black mark on the dial at the moment when the phenomenon being measured ends. So the user can read the duration of the phenomenon - a horse race or something else - on the dial thanks to the time written by the hand. The chronograph was born!
Niciun comentariu:
Trimiteți un comentariu