The year 2025 is one of jubilees for the watch industry, making it only natural to expect some impressive products from celebrating brands, which, by the way, include two of the Holy Trinity. But until the rollouts start or as they continue (some maisons have already begun), here is a brief look back at horology’s powerhouses, most of which were founded by youthful visionaries as early as in their 20s.
270th: Vacheron Constantin
Vacheron Constantin holds the distinction of being the world’s oldest continuously operating watch manufacturer with a legacy of unbroken horological excellence dating back to 1755. That year, 24-year-old Jean-Marc Vacheron established his watchmaking business by taking on an apprentice, thus inaugurating a family dynasty.
Each successive generation built upon the foundation of excellence he set, elevating the Vacheron name to prominence through exceptional technical skills and groundbreaking innovations. However, it was the strategic alliance with businessman François Constantin in 1819 that truly propelled the company into an era of rapid growth and international acclaim. Vacheron Constantin timepieces adorned the wrists of royalty and aristocracy, counting among its clientele a former King of Egypt and Maharaja of Patiala.
The brand is known for pioneering the world’s earliest horological complications — in fact, the Berkley Grand Complication released last year, comprising 63 functions, is currently the most complicated of them all — as well as creating some of the most iconic timekeepers in the business, including the sporty Overseas and elegant Patrimony.
See also: Here are our six favourite timepieces from LVMH Watch Week
To kickstart its 270th anniversary celebrations, the manufacture recently brought back the hotly sought-after 222 in steel via the Historiques collection. And if previous milestone years are anything to go by, there are certainly more exceptional releases on the horizon. Not a bad way for newly appointed CEO Laurent Perves to start, eh?
250th: Breguet
See also: First look at Audemars Piguet’s latest AP House in Raffles Hotel (and the world’s first AP Café!)
Abraham-Louis Breguet, arguably the most significant and influential figure in horological history, leaves us to ponder not what he did invent, but rather what he did not.
He quickly gained recognition in Paris after arriving from Switzerland at age 15. Apprenticing under skilled masters, his talent soon reached the French court, with Queen Marie Antoinette becoming a devoted patron. She commissioned numerous pieces, most notably watch No 160, which incorporated the fullest range of horological expertise known at the time.
In 1775, at 28, Breguet established his own workshop in Paris. The development of the automatic “Perpétuelle” watch was the first major success of his career. Subsequently, he invented the Breguet hands to improve legibility; the gong-spring for repeating watches; the pare-chute, the precursor to all shock absorbers; a balance spring with an overcoil to improve precision; and most famously, the tourbillon, to counter the adverse effects of gravity as well as the split-seconds chronometer, the forerunner of the modern chronograph.
He was also behind the world’s first wristwatch, commissioned by Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples.
Breguet’s current watch collections fuse historical craftsmanship with modern watchmaking. The Tradition line showcases the brand’s technical expertise, while the Classique emphasises precision and elegant design. The watches in the Marine collection reflect Breguet’s appointment as watchmaker of the French Royal Navy in 1815 and the Type XX series evokes its 1950s designs for the French naval air army. The maison is launching into a quarter of a millennium with new CEO Gregory Kissling at its helm. Kissling spent more than two decades at Swatch Group and was previously the vice president of product at Omega.
150th: Audemars Piguet
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Childhood friends Jules Louis Audemars and Edward Auguste Piguet established their workshop in 1875 in their home village of Le Brassus, placing bets in the Vallée de Joux’s tight-knit network of watchmakers and artisans. Despite the rise of industrialisation, the duo doubled down on their convictions of crafting unique mechanisms manually. Company ledgers show that nearly 80% of the watches it produced between 1882 and 1892 included complications, from chiming to chronograph and astronomical timepieces — all assembled and finished by hand.
However, with factory-produced watches on the rise and quartz units coming out of Japan, the brand needed a trump card to stay relevant. Then managing director George Golay gave watch designer Gérald Genta a call and said: “Mr Genta, I need a steel sports watch that has never been done before. I want it to be something totally new and waterproof. I want the design by tomorrow morning.”
Genta’s idea was to replicate the system of a scaphander’s helmet on the watch case with eight screws visible on the exterior. The Royal Oak’s first sketches were drawn that night, the prototype was completed within a year and it came out of production in 1972.
With its exposed screws, octagonal bezel, and integrated bracelet, the Royal Oak was not only Audemars Piguet’s saving grace. It also became the face of the brand, inspiring a whole generation of watchmakers to adopt its distinctive features. Think IWC’s Ingenieur, Girard-Perregaux’s Laureato, Vacheron Constantin’s 222 and Patek Philippe’s Nautilus.
Audemars Piguet has remained independent and family-owned ever since its founding. Now in its fourth generation, the company is overseen by Jasmine Audemars and Olivier Frank Edward Audemars. Brought in as CEO last year, Ilaria Resta is focusing on innovating for the future while maintaining the brand’s overall health.
120th: Rolex
In 1905, at 24, Hans Wilsdorf founded a company in London specialising in the distribution of timepieces. At a time when pocket watches were still the norm, the German businessman had foresight: he knew wristwatches would completely replace them someday. However, they were not the most accurate timekeepers, so he set out to create his own and equipped them with precise movements manufactured by a Swiss watchmaking company in Bienne.
The first Rolex was released in 1908. As for the name, Wilsdorf said: “I tried combining the letters of the alphabet in every possible way. This gave me some hundred names, but none of them felt quite right. One morning, while riding on the upper deck of a horse-drawn omnibus along Cheapside in the city of London, a genie whispered ‘Rolex’ in my ear.”
Two years later, Rolex received the world’s first wristwatch chronometer certification and soon relocated its headquarters to Geneva, where it could access the city’s pool of skilled artisans and tap into advanced technologies.
The first waterproof and dustproof wristwatch, Oyster, marked a major step forward for the brand, as proven by English swimmer Mercedes Gleitze’s 10-hour effort across the English Channel; the crew on the first expedition to fly over Mount Everest; and Sir Malcolm Campbell, who set a land speed record of over 300 miles per hour (approximately 485kph) at Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, the US, at the wheel of his Bluebird.
The year 1945 saw the birth of the Datejust, the first self-winding wrist chronometer to indicate the date in a window on the dial. And as intercontinental travel became commonplace, the GMT-Master was designed as a navigation aid for professionals criss-crossing the globe. These models are also celebrating their 80th and 70th birthdays in 2025.
While anniversaries are not really Rolex’s thing, the triple threat milestone might just be enough cause for celebration. Only time will tell what is in store at Watches and Wonders 2025 this April.
165th: Tag Heuer
In 1860, 20-year-old Edouard Heuer opened his watchmaking shop in his family farm at Saint-Imier, Switzerland, producing pocket watches mostly in silver. He would later move his atelier to Brugg, where it operated under the name Edouard Heuer & Compagnie before relocating to Bienne, where it remained for more than a century. His first patent, the crown-operated winding system, changed the course of watchmaking.
Heuer later focused on improving the accuracy of chronographs as sporting events rapidly expanded in the 1880s. He introduced a patent to improve the oscillating pinion, allowing the chronograph to start and stop instantly at the push of a button. At the turn of the 20th century, innovations in industrial production, transport, science, athletics and medicine brought demands for more precise timing and Heuer delivered with his innovations. The reliability of his stopwatches made them the choice for the world’s leading sporting events, including the Olympic Games and Formula One races.
As the newer generations took over, the brand became more synonymous with ultra-precise chronographs and the rally world. With the Autavia, Heuer Carrera and Monaco, it began to embrace bold shapes and colours before moving towards a more refined direction at the end of the 1970s.
This year, Tag Heuer is returning to the track as the official timekeeper of Formula One. To mark its comeback, the maison recently released five motor-racing-inspired chronographs at LVMH Watch Week, including one in collaboration with Oracle Red Bull Racing.
165th: Panerai
Panerai’s story began in 1860 when Giovanni Panerai opened his first shop on the Ponte alle Grazie spanning the Arno River in Florence, Italy. It was the first watch and clock store in the city and doubled as a school for the trade. As purveyors of the finest Swiss brands, the Panerai family was contacted by the Regia Marina to supply them with precision pocket watches and chronographs.
In order to meet military requirements, a radium-based powder was developed to make the dials brighter. The compound’s high luminescence ensured that military divers and commandos who ventured into the depths of the sea and undertook covert operations could rely on their timepieces even in the most adverse environments. The 47mm Radiomir watch was watertight thanks to Rolex’s involvement in the cushion-shaped steel case and movement. After a few years of tweaks, the Radiomir summed its definitive physiognomy in 1940 with a stronger case made from a single block of steel and a simplified dial with large Arabic numerals.
Discovered by Nobel prize-winning scientist Marie Curie, radium is one of the most radioactive chemicals on the periodic table. As its toxic effects were better documented, Panerai adopted a tritium-based luminescent instead, patented under the Luminor trademark. The Luminor gradually became the brand’s signature diving timepiece, characterised by the crown-protection bridge.
Luminescence is still at the heart of Panerai today. Last year, it revealed the Submersible Elux LAB-ID concept, which converts mechanical energy into electricity to light up 160 micro-LEDs on the dial indices, hands and bezel.
160th: Zenith
Watchmaker Georges Favre-Jacot was merely 22 when he founded the atelier that would become Zenith in Le Locle, Switzerland in 1865. His company was the first Swiss watch producer to unite the various disciplines of horology under one roof, giving rise to the vertical integrated manufactures we know today. His obsession with precision paid off when his company won the Grand Prix chronometry award at the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition. Designed to achieve the pinnacle of precision timekeeping at the time, the movement was called “Zenith”. The company later went by the same name in honour of the prize-winning calibre.
On the occasion of its 100th anniversary, Zenith decided to tackle a major technical challenge: the invention of a self-winding mechanical chronograph. Though the company missed its deadline to complete the project, the El Primero, with its lightning-quick balance frequency of 36,600vph (5Hz) and ability to measure elapsed times to 1/10th of a second, was one of the greatest horological inventions of the 20th century.
Unfortunately, the El Primero was not able to save the company from financial collapse. Then owners Chicago-based Zenith Radio Corporation shut operations and ordered the tools, machines and components to be dumped or sold. But Charles Vermont, a senior engineer and the hero of Zenith’s story, secretly stashed the technical plans and tools for the El Primero in the manufacture’s attic.
Zenith scraped by for almost a decade until rumours swirled that Rolex was on the lookout for a new engine to power its Daytona. The El Primero was just what it was looking for and, lo and behold, Vermont appears with the blueprint years after they were hidden. The El Primero is still revered as one of the most legendary movements today with a myriad of variations occupying the maison’s portfolio, including the newly launched Defy Skyline Chronograph Skeleton.
