Audemars Piguet Watches - Rare Vintage Watches

History of Audemars Piguet

The year is 1875 in a Swiss village of Le Brassus a young 23 year-old watchmaker Jules-Louis Audemars and young 21-year-old Edward-Auguste Piguet both finish public school and moved to the Valley de Joux in the Jura region of Switzerland to find jobs in the local watch making industry. Audemars began creating and marketing complicated movements under the name of Haute Horogerie watches in his parent’s upstairs floor home. Audemars Home

While Piguet found employment as a “repasseur” (a master watchmaker who performs the final regulation on a watch).

Audemars and Piguet joined forces in 1882 and officially registered at 12 noon on December 6th the official name “Audemars Piguet et Cie” which specialized in ultra-thin watches with complications. There first watch which includes minute repeater, a perpetual calendar displaying the phases of the moon, split-second chronograph, and a minute counter.

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What’s amazing is that the Audemars Piguet et Cie company wasn’t “official founded” until 7 years later in 1889, by this time they had become the third largest employer of watch manufacturing in the Canton of Vaud. Later that year a branch office was built in Geneva. Audemars was in charge of production and the technical side of things, while his partner Piguet focused primarily on sales. The sole purpose of the new branch office was to create its own watch components and the assembling in-house with direct supervision and strict quality control over their new high-quality, complex, ultra-precise watches before they left the factory. The greatest, most renowned retail jewelers were now ordering watches from Le Brassus. Today, you could only identify their work by their serial number, the result of the prestigious jewelers, such as Gubelin and Tiffany & Co., wanting only their own name engraved on the movement and case, and not that of the Audemars Piguet.

In 1892 they produced the first-ever wristwatch with a Minute Repeater, which was ordered for Louis Brandt.

1893, Audemars Piguet Company decided to devote time to making wristwatches. At that time, interminable discussions turned around the essential question: whether to position the winding crown on the left or right side of the case?

Between 1894 and 1899 Audemars Piguet Company produced 1,208 watches, some very complex watches. Including the legendary “Grande Complication” series, which is still being produced today. It was equipped with grand and small strike and minute repeater chiming on three gongs, with an alarm striking on independent gongs, perpetual calendar, deadbeat seconds, and chronograph with jumping seconds (fifth of a second indication,) and split-seconds hand.
At around this same time, the retail operations in Geneva and now London were transformed into full-service branches where watches were not only serviced but also assembled. By 1914, Audemars Piguet launched a project to develop a watch so complicated that it would take six years of continuous production before the watch could be delivered to the importers Guignard & Golay in London. The article in question is a pocket watch with two dials and a one-minute tourbillon mechanism.

As well as a tourbillon, this double dial Lepine, gold watch, Number 16.869, includes a minute repeater, a chronograph with 60-minute and 12-hour counters, perpetual calendar with displays which "jump" at midnight, display of the leap year cycle, the "age" and phases of the moon, and power reserve display. The second face shows an additional 24 hours based on the sidereal hour, moving a pair of independent hands. A special system connected to this gear train makes it possible to see the changes in the London sky at any time of the day or night, through an oval-shaped opening in the rear dial. The sky is represented by 315 stars engraved on a plate of gold, enameled in blue. The stars, with their respective names, are all clearly visible.

1915, Audemars Piguet sets a world record that remains unmatched today, by creating the smallest five-minute repeater movement of all time.

Unfortunately, Jules Audemars died in 1918 and the following year Edward Piguet followed. Audemars Piguet continued to prosper, establishing several technical milestones with the creation of the world’s smallest minute repeater watch, only having a diameter of just 15.8 millimeters; Hunter Model (hinged-lid pocket watch) debut with a jumping second hand, also featuring a barometer, quarter repeater, independent second hand, the date and day of the week.

1920, Audemars Piguet delivered the most sophisticated fob watch comprising 16 complications (tourbillon, large and small chime, equation of time indicator, perpetual calendar, sidereal time indicator, as well as, most unusually, a blue enamel dial engraved with 315 stars which, thanks the cut of the dial, exactly reproduced the night sky above London.)

Audemars Piguet creates the first jumping-hour wristwatch driven by calibre HPVM10’’’ in 1921

1925 Audemars Piguet's creative watchmakers produce another first: the worlds thinnest pocket watch measuring just 1,32 millimeters.

The first wrist chronometers appeared in 1927. The year 1928 seen the development of the world’s first Audemars Piguet Skeleton watch.

Needless to say, then as now, Audemars Piguet was considered one of the finest watch manufacturers in the world. Business boomed, as did the world economy. Customers of Audemars Piguet included such prestigious jewelers as Gubelin, Tiffany & Co., Cartier and Bulgari. Unfortunately, the company's success ground to a shocking halt in 1929 when only 737 watches were sold. By contrast, nearly 2,000 watches had been sold in 1920. With the stock market crash in 1929 and the subsequent Depression, there were suddenly very few customers for expensive watches. Like other Swiss watch companies, Audemars Piguet was forced to layoff most of its workforce, until hitting rock bottom in 1932, when just two watches were produced.

During World War II the manufacturer reorganized and was able to create another ultra-thin mechanical Calibre in the world (1.64mm). Sales continued to grow through the 1940’s and 1950’s

1946 Thanks to calibre 9’’’ML which is a mere 1.64 mm thick, Audemars Piguet creates the world’s smallest hand-wound movement for a wristwatch.

1955 Introduction of the first Audemars Piguet wristwatch equipped with a perpetual calendar mechanism (calibre VZSSQP): this timepiece displays the “regular” irregularity of the months, while taking account of the leap years.

1967 Audemars Piguet and Jaeger LeCoultre designed and created the flattest automatic movement in the world (2.45mm) with a 21 carat gold rotor placed in the center. Three years later a new model with a jumping date was created.

After two years of research the world’s first high end luxury sports watch in stainless steel “Royal Oak” (Calibre 2121) was produced in 1972. Gerald Genta designed it. The watch launched at the Basel watch fair was a radical departure from the current watch trends. The unique octagonal bezel was a revolutionary shape in watch making. The shape was inspired by the HMS Royal Oak, the first armored British warship built in 1862. A small detail of this ship was the octagonal portholes with exterior frames secured with visible bolts.

The industry reacted with skepticism at the market launch, but soon the critics fell silent as the Royal Oak was a success beyond expectations. Today, it is synonymous with the name Audemars Piguet.

1978 Audemars Piguet strengthened its tradition in the domain of calendar watches by developing a new version of its first wristwatch with perpetual calendar, launched in 1950 (with movement programmed to 2100).

1983 The “Royal Oak” was equipped with lunar phases and a lunar calendar.

1984 Audemars Piguet unveiled the ROYAL OAK with perpetual calendar

1986 The first self-winding tourbillon was unveiled, as well as a rectangular wristwatch with minute repeater and jumping hour hand and repeater striker comprising 412 pieces, and a ladies’ watch with minute repeater and carillon.

1989 Audemars Piguet creates the Dual Time, the first wristwatch to display the time in a second time zone and yet driven by a single self-winding movement (calibre 2229/2845).

1994 Whereas this mechanism had thus far only been integrated within pocket- watches, Audemars Piguet fits it within a wristwatch and presents the first hand-wound movement with grand and small strike and quarter repeater sounding on two gongs (calibre 2868).

1995 The Manufacture adds a split-seconds chronograph to its Triple Complication launched in 1992, thus giving rise to the first “Grande Complication” self-winding wristwatch (calibre 2885).

1999 Audemars Piguet unveiled the hand wound caliber 3090 (thickness 2.88mm, diameter 21.4mm with 148 components) and power reserve of 48 hours.

2000 Celebrating the 125th anniversary of the company founding, the Jules Audemars Dynamograph wristwatch (calibre 2891) is added to the Audemars Piguet Classic Collection. It is characterized by a new qualitative indication: that of the torque supplied by the mainspring.

2002 For its 30th anniversary, the Royal Oak treats itself to the Concept watch. Its aesthetics are resolutely futurists; the materials used for its case, titanium and 602 alacrite, stem from cutting-edge technological research; and its original movement (calibre 2896) reaches new peaks of sophistication.

2003 Audemars Piguet, official partner of Défi Suisse, Ernesto Bertarelli’s yacht ALINGHI won the AMERICAS CUP. A commemorative watch, the ROYAL OAK CITY OF SAILS, was launched in a limited edition.

2004 Launch of the fourth piece in the Tradition d’Excellence Collection. Limited to 20 pieces, this Royal Oak hand-wound tourbillon chronograph has a double ten-day power-reserve indication and a 30-minute counter. The watch is equipped with the 2893 calibre. The case back and the bracelet are made of platinum 950.
2005 Audemars Piguet presents the Edward Piguet Moss Agate Tourbillon. This tourbillon is the world’s first watch to be equipped with a plate in moss agate, a natural semi-translucent mineral graced with a fine mottled pattern reminiscent of plant-life motifs.

Audemars Piguet is now the oldest watch manufacturer still in the hands of the families who created the brand.

Today the company, along with Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin, is sometimes claimed to be one of the top three Swiss watchmakers. It owns about 40 per cent of Jaeger LeCoultre and every timepiece manufactured in-house is still made using the old-fashioned hand-made technique.