180 YEARS OF

LOGO | Winged Hourglass
L
Longines began ogos have become a prominent feature of any city. ey
using the winged jump out of every media source and inuence our lives
hourglass in 1867
every day to an ever increasing degree. e oldest logo
(bottom) but did
not register it registered at the World Intellectual Property Organiza-
until 1889 (center). tion (WIPO) that is still in use today is not one of the
The stylized bright conspicuous names that light up New York, Lon-
hourglass, similar
don and Tokyo. is logo, a winged hourglass, originat-
to the one used
today, was created ed in a small town in the Swiss Jura region. It was May
in 1942 (top). 27, 1889 when Ernest Francillon, owner of the watch
brand Longines, submitted this symbol to the Swiss
patent oce as the trademark for his company. It was a
groundbreaking move that was clearly in line with his
vision for the company.
In 1854, Ernest Francillon took over the ownership
of the watch manufacturing business founded by his
uncle, Auguste Agassiz, in Saint-Imier, Switzerland. As
was common in those days, Agassiz had purchased
watch parts from various locations to be assembled by
local piece workers in their homes. Francillon, his
nephew and successor, was unhappy with the inconvenience
of working with far-ung suppliers and artisans
and so he approached this problem in a clever and,
for those days, extremely modern way – by establishing
a watch factory that concentrated the crasmanship of
his employees and also expanded the mechanical
process in the horological industry. is new, industrialized
way of manufacturing watches made it possible
to streamline and increase production and to introduce
consistent quality standards. e watches manufactured
by Longines in Saint-Imier were subjected to
quality controls, were individually numbered, and provided
with the brand name “Longines” (followed by
various addenda in those early years). Using a brand
name itself was progressive. Now watches could feature
a uniquely created brand name rather than the name of
the company’s founder or owner. In the case of
Longines, this was the name of a geographical area (“les
100 | WatchTime LONGINES SPECIAL
The oldest registered logo still
in use today is Longines’s
WINGED HOURGLASS.
WWW.WATCHTIME.COM