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