Longines watch was an award-winning innovator and reformer in Swiss watchmaking industry in the decades before the birth of Omega and Rolex, and was favored by Einstein, aviation hero and Hollywood royalty.
Allen Bohr
An ancient brand, pursuing Excellence.
An interesting story about Longines Watch, with its long watchmaking history, proves that its famous winged hourglass logo is the oldest trademark in the world-it has been used continuously until now and was first registered in 1889.
Longines won the prize at the Paris World Expo as early as 1867. In fact, they won many accurate timing awards from the observatory at the World Expo.
August Agassiz was founded in St. Imil, Switzerland on 1832 with the company name "Raiguel Jeune&Cie". It was not until 1867 that the company was named Longines, which was taken from the local area ('les longines'). Ernest Francois, Agassiz's nephew, concentrated all the watchmaking enterprises in one place.
Longines was a leading watchmaker in the late 19 and early 20th century. By comparison, we can see that Omega and Rolex did not exist at that time, and these two brands were not born until 1903 and 19 15.
Longines watches realized that the new factory revolution from the United States and the failure of the developing British watchmaking industry have become an important influence on the modernization of Swiss watchmaking industry, encouraging people to shift from "family-style" cottage industry to machinery-assisted production of large parts, while still maintaining its famous Swiss quality.
Retro Longines watches in 1950s and 1960s provided watches with high quality and excellent value. Longines are much cheaper than Rolex and Omega watches nowadays, but do you know? Comparatively speaking, the movement of Longines watch is completely "self-made", with fine craftsmanship, no springs and no large plates with good inclination.
The most obvious visual difference is that Longines watches use round brass "chatons" to fix rubies, in which the pivot of the movement rotates. In the early days, when mass jewelry production was not so advanced, Chatons were used to make it easier to insert uneven jewelry into the movement. Its beauty makes the movement look golden and brilliant, continuing the expensive and peculiar design. Interestingly, many very high-end watch manufacturers today still insist on this old-fashioned practice, such as Alange & Sohne.
Chronograph and Space Race
Everyone who is interested in watches will notice that Omega sports watches have cooperated with NASA for decades, and 1969 landed on the moon.
As we all know, Omega beat competitors Rolex and Longines in the NASA test. The crystal of Longines watch was deformed and fell off in high temperature and decompression tests, and Omega was intact.
Ironically, Longines is a brand with a long and outstanding professional knowledge in the field of chronograph development. As early as 1868, Longines took the lead in introducing the first "20H" pocket watch chronograph.
Longines created the most important chronograph "13 z" in 19 13. This is the first chronograph movement specially designed for watches. It is a "single button", that is, unlike most modern timepieces which have two independent start/stop and reset buttons, it has only one button to operate the timer. Later, in 1936, the beautiful "13ZN" introduced another world-first "flyback" chronograph, which can be reset and restarted immediately without stopping.
There is no need to exaggerate their innovation-in fact, even today, single button and flyback chronograph are still technical achievements that most brands cannot make. In an era when watches are still indispensable tools rather than jewels, the development of pocket watch timers in the past was revolutionary and easier to operate hands-free, which became very important in early aviation and military affairs.
Longines watch has not become the official equipment of astronauts, but its history is enviable.
1896 No "official" timekeepers were appointed in the first modern Olympic Games, but Longines provided these watches and competed with Omega for timing rights in future Olympic Games.
Longines watch is a great innovator of competition timing. 19 12 years, it invented the first "broken line" timing system at the finish line to stop the timer when the winner crossed, and also invented "Photogines" and "Contifort" systems to record the time of the contestants and infer the winner.
Charles Lindbergh made his first nonstop transatlantic solo flight between new york and Paris in 1927, and became a world-famous star, accompanied by Longines for 33.5 hours. Later, in cooperation with Longines, Lindbergh created the "Lindbergh Time Angle Table" in 193 1 year, which enabled pilots to calculate their positions through celestial navigation.
In 1942' s movie Casablanca, the screen legend humphrey bogart wore his personal Longines Watch, and later in Longines Watch advertising campaign, he appeared with another movie idol, Audrey Hepburn, with the slogan "Elegance is an attitude".
Longines watches, combining examples of performance and elegance, also timed Formula One racing, Commonwealth Games, French Open and horse racing events (such as Real ascot and Melbourne Cup) in the 1960s.
1970 Shi Ying' crisis' table came out, even Rolex made its own quartz watches, so the Swiss were afraid of being left behind by the Japanese. Longines once again played the leading role, announcing that its 1969 "Super Timekeeping" became the world's first mass-produced timekeeping watch. 1984, they introduced an "ultra-precision" quartz watch with thermal compensation, with a thickness of only 1.98 mm.
In 2008, a golden longines owned by Albert Einstein, a genius of physics, was auctioned for $596,000.
Be swallowed up by swatch
Longines watch was purchased by "Ebauches SA" at 197 1. When they merged into the watchmaking giant (later called "Swatch Group") in 1983, they gradually gave up their R&D and production capacity.
Today, Swatch Group is pleased to sell you Longines watches.
But the problem is, as the largest watchmaking group in the world, they also want to sell you other 17 brands of watches, including Omega, Blancpain, Breguet, Tissot, Hamilton, Mido, Rado and Harry Winston.
Instead of competing with yourself, compete with brands such as Rolex, TAG Heuer and Cartier.
So what should we do? In order to prevent all brands at the same level in the group from eating into each other's sales, Swatch people have built their own "family" to let each brand compete for their own niche market.
Fun&funky Swatches sells for less than150; Omega relies on its widely publicized National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and James Bond Society to have a mid-range market of 3,000 to 7,000 pounds. Blancpain & Breguet & Breguet takes care of picky buyers. They hope to get high-end hand-made high-end fashion watches with a price of more than 65,438+00,000.
Where will Longines stay? Fill the gap in this market at a price lower than Omega.
This is an artificial middle-level layout, slightly lower than the proud brand that once occupied the peak position of the watchmaking industry.
However, in a sense, is Swatch's positioning actually a good thing for watch buyers?
Some luxury brands don't provide products that are really worth the money, hype them up and put in a lot of advertisements. Those expensive celebrity spokespersons eventually lead to inflated prices, and customers pay the bill.
If you want to buy a famous Swiss-made watch with a long history and produce elegant, beautiful and innovative watches, Longines' suppression and positioning of Swatch is actually an excellent opportunity to buy high-quality watches.
Longines watches stopped making their own movements in the late1980s. Although they still miss the old real "internal" movements and lack high-end finishing, they do benefit from such reliable movements. Eta (also part of Swatch Group)
However, interestingly, all the movements of Longines are now referred to by the letter "L". Admittedly, although the foundation is ETA's universal movement, they are still specially customized for Longines watches.
They maintain a good cooperative relationship. Other companies such as IWC, Breitling, TAG Heuer and Panerai also use ETA-derived movements-but they will give you more privileges.
Longines watches are an excellent choice for everyday wear. Longines watches buy about 1.5 million watches every year, which makes Longines watches one of the biggest monsters in the watchmaking industry.
Revival of heritage
It can be said that Longines watches lack a truly famous model for advertising activities, such as James Bond's Rolex submarine or steve mcqueen's TAG Heuer.
In recent years, Longines has tried to change this situation by re-launching some watches that can be traced back to its brand tradition, such as:
The release of Longines Diver in 2007 means that Longines Diver was one of the first people to ignite the ubiquitous retro design craze, and they did a good job. Longines watch reproduces its 1960 model 7042 "super compressor" case, with built-in rotating bezel and double crown, creating a handsome and distinctive diving watch that can dive 300 meters.
The 20 17 Avigation BigEye chronograph won the "Best Revival" award in the Geneva Advanced Watch Award. This is a modern version of Longines 1930 series chronograph, which is designed with frame-shaped dome sapphire crystal glass and charming asymmetric dial. Equipped with Longines' unique L688.2 movement, it has 54-hour power storage and accurate "column wheel" starting function-usually only high-end chronograph watches have it.
Longines re-launched VHP "ultra-high-precision" timekeeping in 20 17, which made Longines one of the top watchmaking companies. The watch has extremely high accuracy, which can ensure that the annual error does not exceed 5 seconds. Coupled with the perpetual calendar that will never be cleared, and the ingenious gear detection system, the hands of the watch can be automatically cleared after being impacted or subjected to a strong magnetic field.
20 18, MasterCollectionAnnualCalendar brings complex functions provided by some brands, which are usually expensive. Surprisingly, the mechanical calendar function (that is, displaying date and month at the same time, automatically displaying 30-day and 365,438+0-day months, and only manually resetting every February) has just been developed. Like 1996, Patek Philippe. The unique 64-hour power storage L897.2 movement is by far the most affordable high-quality calendar watch.
Although it may not be like their glorious heyday, retro or modern Longines watches still provide some elegant watches, because they adhere to the historical principles of innovation, quality and innovation and surpass themselves.
Let's look at a data first. According to the calculation of Morgan Stanley, an American investment bank, in 20 17 years, only six Swiss watch brands had turnover exceeding 10 billion Swiss francs, and Longines was one of them. Therefore, there is no doubt that Longines is a commercially successful brand, in other words, Longines has a large output and good sales.
Longines is not a top watch, it mainly focuses on the mid-end market, and the price is generally between 1 and 20000, making it one of the most competitive brands in this price range. In fact, Longines in history are much higher than now, but it is obvious that Longines are more famous and more profitable now.
Longines have done quite well in the domestic market, and the design is quite pleasing, which conforms to the aesthetics of most people in China. In addition, Longines gained great popularity in China by inviting some celebrities to be contemporary speakers and sponsoring some sports events. Therefore, Longines is a good choice for those who want to buy a slightly better watch and wear it, but don't want to spend too much money on it.
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Among the second-class and second-class brands with ETA as the main camp, many brands are replacing the original 2824/2892 with C80 core.
The C80 movement only increases the energy storage time by excessively squeezing the thickness of the spring/barrel and greatly reducing the frequency. The size of energy storage will directly lead to a large error gap of the movement and poor stability of the movement. Moreover, if you want to wind it automatically, it is difficult to fill it up. 80 hours of energy storage is basically useless, just a gimmick.
Longines resolutely does not use this kind of movement, only uses its own 888.2. It has done a good job in frequency reduction and balance between spring pressing and spring pressing, which can not only ensure the stability of the movement, but also improve the energy storage time.
Only this, Longines is enough to be worthy of consumers! Not to mention the historical precipitation of the brand, Longines was one of the earliest brands that could produce their own movements and supply them to the outside world, and they were all ace movements at that time.
Although Longines is now "forced to land", Longines is now positioning a higher brand than Longines when it takes the high-end route. I don't know where it is.