In 1883 Gottlieb Hauser founded his Alpina Swiss Watchmakers Corporation, and in doing so united the leading Swiss independent watchmakers who became known as the Alpinists. In 1901, the trademark ‘Alpina’ was registered and appeared for the first time on high-end calibres and watches produced by Gottlieb Hauser. As many other watch brands, the…
In 1962 the Aquastar brand was founded by Frédéric Robert in Geneva, Switzerland, and initially introduced as a sub-brand of the Swiss watch company JeanRichard SA. The brand was not only born from the passion of one man for the sub-marine world but was also reflecting a period where, for the first time, the sub-marine…
Until 1974 the Aquastar brand watches were looked at as stricktly professional instruments, and were only available through professional diving equipment outlets and were never offered on a large scale to retail distributors. But that year Frédéric Robert retired and in 1975 Aquastar was acquired by the Eren Group, also established in Geneva. They made the…
In 1983 the Aquastar company is sold by the Eren Group to the brothers Gaston and Marc Seinet, and the companies name changed to Aquastar Instruments SA, again located in Geneva, Switzerland. At first they continued to sell the Regate with the Lemania 1345 movement for a number of years. The Regate Newport…
On October 9, 2020 it’s Rick Marei who made public he has bought the Aquastar brand (including old stock, vintage tools and even the old Aquastar patents) from Gaston and Marc Seinet, together with financial help of the Synchron Group. It is their goal to resurrect the Aquastar brand and bring it…
The Atlantic watch company was founded in Bettlach near Grenchen, Switzerland, in 1888 by Eduard Kummer. He was one of the founders of Swiss horology. The company was originally called EKB (Eduard Kummer Bettlach) and later, in 1930, renamed Atlantic. Eduard Kummer became a qualified master of horology and under his guidance the company grew quickly.…
In 1875 Jules Louis Audemars and Eduard Auguste Piguet decided to join forces, in order to develop and craft watches equiped with complex mechanisms. Together they shared a passion for watchmaking and soon the Audemars Piguet brand was born. The company survived some hard times in the history of watch making, by…
The BOLDR Supply Company was founded only recently in 2016 in Singapore as a lifestyle brand with an eye for adventure, focussing mainly on watches. In just a few years the brand manufatured several watch genres, from diver’s, field, explorer, casual, sport, to even the medic watch concept. Beginning 2020 I was contacted…
The history of the Breitling brand started in 1884. You can read about it in the stopwatch section here. Breitling had started with their 765 AVI Co-Pilot series already in 1953, and the brand added a first Yachting version (reference 765-Yachting-CP) in 1966, followed by a second one with a newly designed handset…
The British Bremont Watch Company was founded in 2002 by the brothers Nick and Giles English, inspired by their father and a joint lifetime passion of engineering and aviation. Instead of naming the company ‘English Watches’, they called it Bremont after the French farmer Antione Bremont who once helped them after an…