Back in Time: The TAG Heuer Story

What we now know as TAG Heuer started in 1860, where twenty-year old Edouard Heuer opened his watch making shop in their Saint-Imier family farm, producing pocket watches. Four years later, Heuer moves his company, now named Edouard Heuer & Compagnie, to Brugg and then finally finds its home in the town of Bienne.

With sporting competitions on the rise in the 1880s, Heuer directed the company to produce pocket chronographs, used to time races. TAG Heuer today is known for its rich racing heritage as Heuer pioneered a vital piece of the chronograph—the ‘oscillating pinion’—which allows the chronograph to start and stop instantly when the pusher is clicked. This, he patented in 1887 and it still used in present day.  

Heuer’s chronograph evolved with the times with the rise of automobile and air travel, with a dashboard chronograph dubbed the ‘Time of Trip’. Drivers and pilots could measure the running time of a journey by two hands on a smaller dial while a main dial indicated the time of day. Later on, as wristwatches became the vogue, Heuer moved his chronograph to the wrist.

In the early 1900s, TAG Heuer focused on creating watches that soon became known for precision timekeeping, it then rose to become the supplier of chronographs for the Olympic Games and world championships in alpine events. It soon saw its timepieces in motorsports, athletic, and sailing events in the coming decades, including the Indianapolis 500 and Formula One races.

The Golden Age

Nearly a hundred years after the company was born, Jack Heuer joins Ed. Heuer & Co. S.A., as the fourth-generation leader of the family business and leads it towards the racing heritage it is recognized for today. He started out redesigning their dashboard timers to improve legibility, introducing new models as well. 1960 marked the company’s hundredth year which opened the golden age with several landmarks that will be remembered down time.

 Heuer strengthened their line of stopwatches, creating the aptly named “Century” line built for athletics, motorsports, and industrial timing. 1961 saw the Autavia, which started out as a dashboard clock built for rally cars before becoming the iconic wristwatch that it is today. In the following year, a Heuer timepiece made its way to space, timing American astronaut, John Glenn’s orbit around the earth. Another followed in 1969, this time marking the descent of the Eagle on the surface of the moon.

The Carrera came around in 1963, inspired and named after the infamous Carrera Panamericana in Mexico. While this classic timepiece has been reinvented several times through the years, it keeps the daring and exhilarating spirit of motor racing.

Stars of the Show

Later on, Heuer introduced a new cushion-shaped case on the Camaro, which was its first move away from the traditional round cases and would be the forerunner of the Monaco. On March of 1969, automatic models of the Autavia, Carrera, and Monaco were unveiled to the public which was the precursor of the coming bold, colorful era of the coming decade.

Among the three, the Monaco took center stage, capturing the world’s attention with its edgy square case which would go on to star in the film, Le Mans on actor Steve McQueen.

The 1970s saw a flurry of colorful automatic chronographs from Heuer where he experimented with bold styles and popping shades such as the Calculator, which incorporated a circular slide rule, and the massive Montreal, with dial choices in blue, white, black, and champagne. Then came the Silverstone, which celebrated England’s Formula One circuit, with red, blue, and fume dials.

At the end of the decade, however, Heuer decided to move on to more refined, elegant designs and went on to introduce dive watches into the catalogue.

Modern Mainstays

In the early 1980s, TAG Heuer announced six functional features that would characterize its new series of dive watches that would be carried forward to today’s Aquaracer timepieces. Then, it launched its first re-issue of the Carrera in 1996, thirty two years after the original model was first released. Two years later, the Monaco follows suit. The two have risen to become icons of the TAG Heuer name since then.

By the early 2000s, the brand continued to build on its previous pieces like the Monaco and released the Aquaracer. In 2010, it released its first in-house movement, the Calibre 1887 which would power the new generation of Carreras and serve as the groundwork for the Heuer 01. An integrated movement, it featured a column wheel and the same style of oscillating pinion that Heuer had patented back in its early days.

In 2015, TAG Heuer straddled the line between modern and classical, releasing the first Swiss luxury smartwatch, the Connected and this year launched the third-generation Connected. While completely different from Edouard Heuer’s stopwatches, the Heuer legacy lives on these new pieces, each infused with the daring, innovative spirit that has propelled the brand to a hundred and sixty years and counting.