Dear watch friends welcome back to our magazine. Today I am here to tell you about how a maison has managed to make a name for itself on the timepiece scene thanks to its chronographs.
Founded in the late 1800s, to this day it represents one of the few maisons that fully embodies the spirit of the motor racing world.
For those who still haven’t figured it out, I’m talking about the revolution started by Tag Heuer (at the time just Heuer), which brought innovation to the watch industry…and how!
Always worn by drivers and motoring enthusiasts, Tag Heuer’s watches have been a perfect blend of technical precision and timeless style for more than a century.
Are you ready with helmet and seat belt for another trip back in time? Well, let’s start bringing back the balls of our passion clock….
The Birth of Heuer
It was 1860 when Mr. Edouard Heuer, at the age of 20, founded Uhrenmanufaktur Heuer AG in St-Imier, Switzerland; a company that, even a few years later, was making headlines with its first patent: a keyless crown winding system.
After a few years, he patented his first chronograph and a type of “oscillating pinion,” which is still used today in some high manufacture chronographs.
Mr. Heuer’s passion for timekeeping is almost an obsession to the point of pushing him into continuous new creations.
In fact, in 1911, the “Time of Trip,” the first chronograph for automobile and airplane dashboards, was patented.
The dial of this timepiece features Arabic-style numerals, two large central leaf-shaped hands indicating the time of day, a small sphere at 6 o’clock indicating seconds, and another small sphere at 12 o’clock indicating travel time.
The crown, located at 12 o’clock, enables the movement of the central balls, and a pusher located on the same axis enables the start/stop function of the stopwatch.
The same style is also echoed in Heuer’s first in-house wrist chronograph, introduced in 1914.
It is a timepiece with “exaggerated” dimensions and can easily hint at how the watch has been fitted to the wrists via a leather strap.
We come to 1916, the year Heuer manages to beat the 216,000 vibrations/hour found on the first chronograph in history invented by Louis Moinet in 1816.
By creating the Microsplit, capable of reaching 360,000 vibrations per hour, Heuer was able to achieve the highest frequency chronograph ever seen before.
This enabled its rapid spread into the world of motor racing, thanks to timing readings so accurate that Heuer became the official timekeeper of major sporting events.
Soon after, Heuer created its first “split-second” chronograph that offered the ability to measure to 1/50th of a second.
It was not until 1933 that the “time of trip” evolved, when the Autavia (an acronym for AUTomobilism and AVIAction) chronograph was introduced, which often came with its “companion” Hervue.
These are two timepieces placed on a steel plate equipped with an incredible 8-day power reserve.
From dashboards to wrists
It is around the 1930s and in Europe there is an air of world conflict and Heuer is allowed to produce wristwatches for Luftwaffe aviators: thus the pilot model “Flieger” is born.
The timepiece features a 39 mm diameter chrome case, a black dial housing radium Arabic numerals, two chronograph counters, and a rotating bezel with a triangular index at 12 o’clock (attached to the bezel and rotating to mark a time interval).
At 2 o’clock is located the pusher that has the function of start/stop/reset of the chronograph, and only in the second version a second pusher is added at “4 o’clock” to allow the pilot to stop and restart the chronograph without resetting it (flyback function)
It was not until a few years later, with the introduction of the third counter in the dial, that the Flieger evolved into the form that started a long dynasty of iconic Heuer-branded chronographs.
As soon as World War II ended, Heuer departed from classic chronographs and created a professional timepiece that was capable of indicating tides, moon phases, and a second time zone: its name was Solunar.
Then the Swiss fashion house decided to land on the American continent around the early 1950s, under the Abercrombie & Fitch brand.
A three-counter chronograph called the Seafarer, inspired by the Solunar, is then launched, which also features a complication to show tides in addition to monitoring the phases of the moon.
Instead, the European version of the watch took the name Mareograph and was branded Heuer.
Later, a tachymeter scale integrated into the dial of the Seafarer would be added, which was very useful for racing drivers: thus was born the progenitor of the Carrera, called the Auto-graph.
Heuer Carrera
As motor racing became more popular, watch maisons created timepieces that paid homage to the races and would later become official sponsors such as, for example, the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona dedicated to the famous race at the Daytona Beach track.
The 1960s are running and Heuer wants to carve out a place for itself in this amazing world of motorsport; so it decides to churn out a watch that pays homage to the historic Carrera Panamericana endurance race held in Mexico.
Thus was born the Heuer Carrera, a chronograph that combines elegance and sportiness: an easy-to-read black dial with applied hour markers, two subdials (later to become three) that blend seamlessly with the dial, but are notable for their small white markers and small spheres.
Marked ref.3647, the watch mounts a hand-wound Valjoux 92 mechanical movement in a steel case 36 mm in diameter.
Initially offered with a black dial, it will also be produced in white and “champagne” coloring.
Heuer Autavia
At the same time as the Carrera, the Swiss maison is relaunching the iconic Autavia name by tying it to a wrist chronograph that is more “sporty” than the Carrera.
Initially presented with a black dial, the Autavia has two versions, double counter and triple counter. The double-counter version encases a Valjoux 92 while the triple-counter version mounts a Valjoux 72.
Initially the Autavia had a 38mm diameter and Dauphine-style spheres, but in the late 1960s it evolved with a case reaching 40mm and “baton” spheres.
A watch in continuous evolution so much so that it reached a size of 42mm in 1970, a period when the race for the first automatic chronograph was very much alive… so alive that it forced some brands, including Heuer, to associate with other maisons: Buren, Breitling and Dubois-Depraz.
Competing maison Zenith, learning of Heuer’s development of an automatic chrono caliber, decided to bring forward the launch of the famous El Primero caliber by two months.
However, the Heuer-led joint venture led to the maison’s launch of its first automatic chronographs in international markets with the Calibre 11 (Chronomatic) movement.
This is a movement with a chronograph module developed by Dubois, with a micro-rotor, or planetary rotor, developed by Buren that provides automatic winding. This construction had also posed the need to place the crown on the left side of the case (9 o’clock).
Meanwhile, the Autavia was so successful that the house created special versions that to this day are quite rare, such as, for example, the Autavia Viceroy, the Autavia Orange Boy, the Autavia Jo Siffert and some GMT versions.
Heuer Monaco
Riding the wave of triumph, Heuer develops another milestone in the world of chronographs. This time it breaks the mold, twists the aesthetic canons of watchmaking and creates a timepiece with an unusual shape: a square case measuring only 39mm with a double counter that is also square, horizontal applied hour markers and baton spheres.
Given its sporty soul, the Swiss maison chooses to link its latest creation to the famous Monaco motor racing circuit.
Thus was born the Heuer Monaco, whose success was almost immediate.
It too cased the automatic caliber developed by the Swiss consortium, namely the Calibre11 that became the Calibre15 in the mid-1970s.
After a short time, the choice was also made to list two Monaco models each equipped with a hand-wound movement: the Valjoux 7736 and the Valjoux 7740.
The arrival of TAG
These were difficult years for the renowned Swiss watchmaker, and Heuer was forced to withdraw the Monaco from its list. We are around the end of the 1970s and the Quartz Crisis casts a black shadow over the mechanical watch market; Japanese and American watchmakers excel in developing and creating super-accurate watches with ever-increasing autonomy through the use of electro-mechanical movements.
Around the mid-1980s, Jack Heuer, CEO of the Heuer Watch Company, was asked to resign. Following his resignation, the Swiss maison is sold to a French company that manufactures turbines for heat engines used on Formula 1 cars, TAG (Techniques d’Avant Garde) through which it undergoes a profound renovation and greater visibility through Grand Prix racing.
TAG Heuer Today
After fifteen or so years of growing success, thanks in part to such an outstanding testimonial as the eternal driver Ayrton Senna, Tag Heuer is being sold to luxury giant LVMH for the astronomical sum of $740 million.
LVMH decides that the iconic models that have made the house famous needed to be brought back to the market. Therefore, a new line is launched for each of the models: Monaco, Autavia and Carrera. Jack Heuer, moreover, absolutely having to be part of the new project, later becomes honorary president of the historic watchmaker founded by his grandfather.
Of course, there is no end to this maison’s obsession with precision, so between 2011 and 2012 TAG Heuer introduced a trio of very special watches: the Mikrograph with an accuracy of 1/100th of a second, the Mikrotimer with an accuracy of 1/1000th of a second, and the Mikrogirder, with an accuracy of 1/2000th of a second.
What will be TAG Heuer’s next challenge?
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