History of the military/luxury watch manufacturer Jaeger Lecoultre (Source: Wikipedia):
Jacques David LeCoultre (1781–1850) and his son Charles Antoine LeCoultre (1803–1881) manufactured watch parts in Le Sentier and were instrumental in improving the steel used for this purpose. [2] The LeCoultre company was founded in 1833 by Jacques LeCoultre's sons Charles Antoine and François Ulysse LeCoultre (1813–1895) in the Vallée de Joux , Canton of Vaud . Eleven years later, Antoine LeCoultre, who had made a name for himself with the manufacture of high-quality pinions and the development of the "LeCoultre graver", invented a device for measuring micrometer distances , the millionometer . At the first Great Exhibition in London in 1851, he received a gold medal for his developments in the fields of precision and mechanization. In 1847, Antoine LeCoultre invented a keyless watch. It was equipped with a rocker, which was operated by a small pusher and with which it was possible to switch back and forth between winding and hand setting functions. In order to avoid bankruptcy in 1858, a partner was sought and the company was renamed LeCoultre, Borgeaud & Cie. Fabrique d'horlogerie en blanc . In 1859 the company had around 100 employees. [3] From 1866 onwards, Antoine's son Élie LeCoultre modernised the company by introducing quality standards . By purchasing machinery and uniting all relevant crafts under one roof, he created the first watch manufactory . This enabled over 350 different watch movements to be produced between 1860 and 1890, of which 128 had chronograph functions and 99 had repeater mechanisms. In 1877, Antoine LeCoultre and Auguste Borgeaud handed the business over to LeCoultre's descendants. Under the leadership of the three sons, the company was renamed LeCoultre & Cie . By 1888, the company employed 480 people, half of whom worked at the company's own premises in Le Sentier. In 1866, LeCoultre & Cie began producing movements with minor complications in small series. In 1891, two complications—the chronograph function and the minute repeater —were combined in a single movement. This development culminated in the production of major complications in the mid-1890s.
20th century
Jacques-David LeCoultre (1875–1948), the grandson of Antoine LeCoultre, became head of watchmaking in 1900 and general director in 1906. From 1902, LeCoultre & Cie manufactured most of the ébauches (French: ébauches ) for the Geneva-based watch brand Patek Philippe for over 30 years (in 1929 he had tried unsuccessfully to acquire more shares in Patek Philippe ). From 1907, LeCoultre & Cie supplied ebauches to the Parisian watchmaker and industrialist Edmond Jaeger (1850–1922), who came from Alsace, based on his designs for the world's thinnest pocket watches (with the K145 caliber , measuring 1.38 mm thick). In 1925, the K7BF Duoplan caliber was developed with the aim of improving the precision of wristwatch movements. Small wristwatches were fashionable at the time. Small watch movements, however, often lacked reliability. Developed by Henri Rodanet, technical director of Etablissements Ed. Jaeger , the Duoplan movement was arranged on two levels – hence the model's name – and the winding crown was recessed into the case on the back. This allowed a large balance to be used to improve the watch's rate , despite its small size. In 1929, the Duoplan was the first wristwatch with a sapphire crystal . In 1928, the skeletonized pocket watch Grande Complication Email Bleu (caliber 17JSSCCRVQ) was produced, featuring a minute repeater, double-hand chronograph, and perpetual calendar .
The development of the Duoplan led in 1929 to the creation of what is still the world's smallest mechanical movement, the Calibre 101, whose original 74 (now 98) components together weighed about one gram. The second watch line equipped with the Calibre 101, the Joaillerie 101 Étrier , appeared in the 1930s. In 1953 , Queen Elizabeth II wore a Jaeger-LeCoultre 101 on her wrist at her coronation. Since 1931, the Reverso model with a reversible case has been offered. This model was originally developed for polo players and features a mineral crystal that can be turned over.
After the merger of Jacques-David LeCoultre with Edmond Jaeger, the watchmaker of the French Navy and supplier to Cartier , in 1930, the company name Jaeger-LeCoultre was created. [4]
The atmospherically powered Atmos table clock was developed in Neuchâtel in 1928 by Jean-Léon Reutter , who sold the patents to Edmond Jaeger in 1930. The first version, patented in 1928 and now known as the Atmos 1 , was marketed by the Compagnie Générale de Radiologie (CGR) in 1930. LeCoultre acquired the patents for France in 1936, and for Switzerland in 1937. Over the next ten years, the company devoted itself to improving the mechanism before beginning production in its current form in 1946. In 2003, JLC launched the Atmos Mystérieuse, powered by the Jaeger-LeCoultre caliber 583 and consisting of 1,460 components. Since 2008, Jaeger-LeCoultre has been commemorating the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt by dedicating the Atmos Marqueterie to him in an edition of ten pieces, which is based on Klimt's work The Expectation .
The collaboration between LeCoultre & Cie and Jaeger culminated in a merger of the two companies under Jacques- David LeCoultre in 1937 under the leadership of Jacques- David LeCoultre , forming the Jaeger- LeCoultre ... [5] In 1944, the world's thinnest wristwatch movement (caliber JLC903 or AP2003) was developed for Audemars Piguet , which was later also used by Vacheron Constantin (VC1003). The administrative director Paul Lebet died in 1945, and his position was transferred to Georges Ketterer. [5] The chairman of the board, Jacques-David LeCoultre, died in 1948, and his successor was also Georges Ketterer. [5] Charles Constantin resigned in 1949 in favor of his nephew Léon Constantin. [5] With the death of Henri Wallner in 1951, all previous directors of Vacheron Constantin had left the management.
The Memovox wrist alarm clock was produced from 1950 and the Futurematic automatic watch from 1951, followed in 1956 by the first self -winding wrist alarm clock, the Memovox Automatic . To mark the International Geophysical Year in 1958, Jaeger-LeCoultre developed a watch that was less sensitive to magnetic fields and shocks and was also water-resistant: the Geophysic chronometer watch , which Jules-César Savary proposed as a watch for research stations in the Antarctic. It was powered by the K478BWS calibre, which featured seventeen jewels , a Breguet hairspring , a swan-neck spring on the balance cock , a shock protection device and a Glucydur balance. In the year of its launch, the Geophysic was presented to William Anderson , captain of the first American nuclear-powered submarine to cross from the Pacific to the Atlantic under the North Pole. In 1959 the first automatic wrist alarm clock for divers, the Deep Sea Automatic Alarm , followed.
In 1965, Georges Ketterer left SAPIC and Jaeger-LeCoultre as managing director and majority shareholder to head Vacheron Constantin, which had been spun off from SAPIC as a subsidiary at the same time. [5] Roger LeCoultre's remaining shares in SAPIC were transferred to a holding company called SAPHIR . In 1967, JLC was involved with eleven other manufacturers in the development of the Beta 2 , the first quartz wristwatch . In 1969, SAPHIR was sold to Favre-Leuba , the oldest continuously producing watch manufacturer in the world at the time. The management of SAPHIR was then taken over by Henry and Barbara Favre.
For the US market, the LeCoultre brand name was retained from the 1930s until the late 1970s due to tariff restrictions imposed by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. For the same reason, the watch cases , dials , and hands of these watches were manufactured in the US. During this period, the American company Vacheron-Constantin-LeCoultre , a subsidiary of Longines -Wittnauer, distributed the watches for the US market. The Jaeger brand name, however, was used for watches produced in France.
Hit hard by the quartz crisis , a majority stake in the company was sold to VDO Automotive in 1978. In 1982, the world's thinnest quartz movement, the K601 , was introduced, followed later that same year by the K608 . In 1986, VDO sold 40% of its shares to Audemars Piguet, but later acquired the remaining shares in Jaeger-LeCoultre, which were owned by the Ketterer family (25%) and a bank (20%). After the quartz crisis subsided, the Grand Réveil was produced in 1989, the first wristwatch with a perpetual calendar and automatic winding. The Master Grand Réveil (like the previous model, with the additional vibration alarm) was introduced in 2004.
