Longines

It subsequently registered that winged hourglass as a trademark under the Madrid System of trademarks; and today it is the oldest current trademark on the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Register of Trademarks.

Longines produced its first mechanism in 1867, and the following year was the first manufacturer to launch a mechanism whose winding was done through the crown of the watch itself, without the need for a key.

In 1896 the firm was in charge of the time measurement at the first modern Olympics. 14 Olympics have had Longines as the official timekeeper, as well as more than 30 Tour de France, and sports championships in gymnastics, skiing, equestrian competition or Formula 1, where it was the sponsor for several years of the Scuderia Ferrari. In 1952, it was the first company to attach a timing system to a photo finish.

Longines is famous for its aviator watches. Captain Philip van Horn Weems designed for the firm a model watch, the Angle Hour Watch, with a movable central dial that could be synchronized with a radio signal as a navigational aid. Charles Lindbergh wore a Weems on his transatlantic flight and designed for the firm a pilot’s watch with his name on it based on the earlier one. Both the Weems and Lindbergh models are still in production today and are some of the oldest models on the market. Amelia Earhart also wore these watches. Other famous Longines owners were Albert Einstein, who owned both a pocket watch and a wristwatch from the brand, Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn.

They were also the first to launch a digital watch with LCD display in 1971, like the one that would later be worn by countless brands to this day. In the mid-1980s, he introduced the Longines VHP, the first thermo-compensated quartz watch, which advanced or retarded less than one second per month.

In 2001 Longines produced its 30 million watch, and in 2007 celebrated the 175th anniversary of the firm.

Today it has several collections for men and women, with the names “Elegance”, “Watchmaking Tradition”, which would be tributes to their models of the past and “Sports”, with several sublines. Some of their best known models are the Lindbergh, Weems, Legend Diver, Conquest, Hydroconquest or Flagship.