Watch archives & heritage


Watch archives & heritage

A chronology of the chronograph

FROM THE BALANCE SPRING TO THE MOON (1675–1969)

By Europa Star
January 2018


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WATCH FILES
Watch archives & heritage  

Watchmaking now on UNESCO’s world heritage list

HERITAGE

December 2020
UNESCO has registered the craftsmanship of mechanical watchmaking and art mechanics on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of (...)

Can watchmaking avoid another tragic loss of heritage?

KNOW-HOW

September 2020
Forty years ago, the quartz crisis caused havoc in the Swiss watch industry, leading to the destruction of many valuable documents in the ensuing economic (...)

A book on the most beautiful watch dials

LIBRARY

August 2020
There are innumerable books devoted to watchmaking, but as astonishing as it may seem, until now there was no work, no comprehensive survey focused (...)

Longines: the forgotten “first commercial quartz crystal watch”

HISTORY / GUEST COLUMN

août 2020
On August 20, 1969, Longines convened the press in Geneva to announce the world’s first commercial quartz wristwatch. Known as the Ultra-Quartz, it was more (...)

From Bulova to Omega: 50 years of lunar adventures

FROM OUR ARCHIVES

March 2020
Today, we tend to associate the conquest of space with the Omega Speedmaster – the only watch worn on the moon, as the Swatch Group manufacture emphasises (...)

Treasures from Enicar’s golden age

March 2020
The legendary Swiss watch company founded in 1913 comes to life again in a beautiful book by Dutchman Martijn van der Ven. The author used illustrations (...)

Secret Gérald Genta designs soon to be revealed

EXCLUSIVE

February 2020
From the Nautilus to the Royal Oak, the most celebrated designer left behind not only a long list of iconic watches, but some 3400 unseen designs. We find (...)

1950-2020: The voices of my ancestors... and mine

EDITORIAL

January 2020
As wishes are in order for 2020, I succumbed to the temptation to look at what my predecessors had written as Europa Star entered each new decade since (...)

The saga of the Bivouac by Favre-Leuba

THROUGH THE LENS OF THE EUROPA STAR ARCHIVES

November 2019
In August 1964, the great mountaineering pioneers Walter Bonatti and Michel Vaucher took four days to conquer the arduous, virgin North face of Whymper (...)

Introducing the MIH Gaïa watch

HERITAGE

September 2019
The Musée international d’horlogerie’s second timepiece has been unveiled and released in La Chaux-de-Fonds in honour of the the 25th edition of the eponymous (...)

Two of the oldest horological organizations join forces

WATCH EVENT

July 2019
The Horological Society of New York and the British Horological Institute will teach for the first time in their combined 300 years of history joint (...)
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Horological Society of New York: from survival to success

UNITED STATES

June 2019
The oldest watchmaking guild in the United States, founded in the 19th century by German immigrants, has followed the ups and downs of the American watch (...)

The quest for an everlasting story

ARCHIVES AND HERITAGE

March 2019
Never has the watchmaking heritage of watch brands been so well-documented. The fashion for vintage has had a hand in this, forcing watchmakers to (...)

The Movado Ermeto: the original “smart” watch

VINTAGEMANIA

March 2019
The story behind the Movado Ermeto, a disruptive timepiece that went against the flow of the rest of the watch industry. Smart, innovative, elegant yet (...)

The historic links between watchmakers and arms manufacturers

ARMOURERS AND WATCHMAKERS

January 2019
Detonators, ammunition and vehicle dashboards: the two sectors complemented one another for no fewer than eight centuries, during which watchmakers (...)

Watchmakers test their DNA

ARCHIVES AND HERITAGE

December 2018
The grand old companies with an uninterrupted history, such as Rolex, Audemars Piguet or Patek Philippe, maintain their heritage with absolute consistency (...)

Heritage: The power of the past

ARCHIVES AND HERITAGE

December 2018
In the watch business it’s difficult to talk about the present without bringing up the past. It’s almost Pavlovian.

Five underrated vintage chronograph calibres

PART II: MINERVA, MOVADO & PIERCE

December 2018
Can you think of a single brand that doesn’t offer a chronograph in their current line-up? The chronograph is still perceived today as one of the most (...)

Five underrated vintage chronograph calibres

PART I EXCELSIOR PARK & ANGELUS

October 2018
Can you think of a single brand that doesn’t offer a chronograph in their current line-up? The chronograph is still perceived today as one of the most (...)

Yesterday’s marketing is more modern than you think it is

VINTAGEMANIA

October 2018
Art deco advertisements certainly look prettier mounted on your wall than the modern ones you’ll find in the glossy magazines in your doctor’s waiting room. (...)

A curated selection of vintage chronographs

VINTAGEMANIA

May 2018
The ’50s, ’60s and ’70s were the apogee of the chronograph. These ten chronographs, selected from hundreds of models, demonstrate the technical vitality and (...)

The risky lure of neo-vintage

12 DISRUPTIONS IN THE WATCHMAKING INDUSTRY

April 2018
Slowly but surely over the past few years, a vintage wave has been sweeping through the watchmaking establishment and influencing styles like few phenomena (...)

Patina: the blue cheese of vintage watches

VINTAGEMANIA

April 2018
NOTA BENE: The word “patina” comes from latin and meant “plate”, at that time most of them were made out of bronze, a material that can be affected by time or (...)

The geopolitics of world time

TRAVEL WATCHES

March 2018
In the late nineteenth century, dividing the world into slices, even if only for time-keeping purposes, raised serious problems between nations and empires (...)

From sedentary time to travelling clocks

HISTORY

February 2018
Whether in quest of pastures new, whether migrating, invading or conquering, engaged in trading and cultural exchanges or on exploration, crusades or (...)

Zulu time

TRAVEL WATCHES

February 2018
Compared with Universal Time and its traditional 24 time zones, the GMT watch is more modest in its offerings: a second time zone, a second ‘point of (...)

Have time, will travel

PORTFOLIO

January 2018
Watchmakers did not need Einstein to intuitively understand that time and space are closely associated, like the two faces of the same coin. Their art was (...)

A forgotten consequence of the Korean war

ARCHIVES

November 2017
In 1952, the Swiss government took the controversial decision to restrict watch exports to Hong Kong. Watchmakers were obliged to respect quotas that cut (...)

A short history of watch fairs

RETROSPECTIVE

March 2017
Although they differ greatly in appearance, the markets of the Middle Ages and today’s big watchmaking exhibitions share the same commercial ambitions. (...)

Roskopf, the forgotten proletarian watch

HISTORY

March 2017
Some fifty years ago, in 1967, Europa Star (issue 3/1967) published an article in collaboration with the Roskopf Association celebrating the hundredth (...)
Europa Star

The Jewish roots of Swiss watchmaking

January 2017
The roots of “Watch Valley” are not only Protestant, as the popular image would have it. Jews – from Alsace in particular – contributed just as much to the (...)

The chronograph: an expression of modern times

HISTORY

January 2017
The chronograph, an ingenious invention of modern times, has taken the measure of human progress for nearly two centuries.

Tudor mines the productive seam of “reinterpretation”

VINTAGEMANIA

November 2016
Officially, at Tudor, they don’t use the word “vintage”, preferring the term “retro-chic”. Old models are not “reissued”, they are “reinterpreted”. It was in (...)
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