180 YEARS OF

HISTORY | 180 Years of Longines
TECHNICAL
INNOVATIONS,
NEW STRUCTURES AND
ongines has been involved in timing
sporting events since the very beginning
of the 20th L
century. In 1954, the
company designed and built a
chronometer with a quartz movement for timing sporting
events. (It happened to be as big as a suitcase.) e
precision of this watch was astonishing, capable of measuring
the time to 1/100 of a second. Making quartz technology
small enough for personal use seemed a promising
goal and Longines worked for more than 10 years on
miniaturizing the quartz watch. In 1966, the company
The first portable
quartz clock from
1954 was designed for
sports timekeeping.
70 | WatchTime LONGINES SPECIAL
presented a huge sensation: a pocket watch with a
quartz movement that immediately won rst prize from
the Neuchâtel Observatory. Longines introduced another
more “user-friendly” version in 1969: a wristwatch
with a quartz movement. e “Ultra-Quarz” appeared
at the same time as the quartz watches produced
by the Japanese company Seiko. Even though quartz
technology has generally been understood as a Japanese
accomplishment, Longines can show that Switzerland
produced groundbreaking work during the pioneering
period of the quartz watch. However, it took several
years until the Ultra-Quarz was ready for mass production
and by that time Seiko already had its own quartz
watches on the market.
When Longines presented the rst quartz wristwatch
with a liquid crystal display in 1972, the company
counted it as another milestone in quartz technology development.
Longines also continued to develop mechanical
watch movements with continued success, especially
with its automatic watches.
But not all was well in the Swiss watch industry. Companies
in the watch sector began to merge as a way to better
meet the demands of the global market. Longines became
a corporation in 1965, and in 1971, the company
became a part of ASUAG, which also owned Ébauches
SA, which later became ETA.
Although Longines continued to achieve satisfactory
sales numbers and entered important Asian markets, the
Swiss watch industry began to experience diculties.
e two largest groups in the industry, ASUAG and
SSIH, were experiencing massive nancial pressures.
e groups depended on Swiss banks who turned to the
corporate consultant Nicolas G. Hayek (1928–2010). In
1982, Hayek submitted a report in which he recommended
a merger of the two groups, and in 1983, his rec-
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