- 1500s The watch making industry centered on Switzerland
because of church persecution.Many of the big names in Swiss luxury watches are French because these were the originally.Protestant and Huguenot watchmakers who fled Roman Catholic France. - 1601: By the end of 15th century, Genevan watches were reputed far and wide, and in 1601,the Watchmakers’ Guild of Geneva was established. About a century later , man. Early horological geniuses left Geneva for the mountains.
- 1700s: Daniel Jean Richard (1665-1741) introduces division of labor in watch making.
- 1770: Abraham-Louis Perrelet creates the first “perpetual” watch.
- 1801: Abraham Louis Breguet patents the tourbillion regulator.
- 1868: Antoine Patek and Jean Adrien Phillippe makes the world’s first wrist watch.
- 1888: Louis Cartier creates a ladies wristwatch with a diamond and gold bracelet.
- Early 1900s : Mass production of watches begins, thanks to new technologies of watchmakers like Frederick Ingold and Georges Lechot. They focused on pocket watches.
- 1917: The end of World War I aids the leap forward in affordability and popularity of wristwatches.
- 1923: The automatic wristwatch is invented by John Harwood.
- 1960s: The integration of electronics and Girard-Perregaux’s development of the first high frequency mechanical watch, also called Swiss Quartz Movement.
- 1970s to the present have seen the great recession of mechanical watches due to the quartz revolution, spearheaded also by cheap materials and the advent of disposable consumer goods.
- In the 1990’s mechanical watches made a comeback in appreciation.
Facts of time 