World's 1200 Top Watch Brands & Watchmakers: GGALLET is a historical Swiss manufacturer of high-end timepieces for professional use. Gallet is the world’s oldest watch and clock making house with history dating back to Humbertus Gallet, a clock maker who became a citizen of Geneva in 1466. The Gallet & Cie (Gallet & Company) name was officially registered by Julien Gallet (1806–1849) in 1826, who moved the family business from Geneva to La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Prior to this date, operations commenced under the name of each of the family patriarchs. Gallet is best known during the 20th century to the present day for its line of MultiChron chronograph wristwatches. Produced primarily for military, industrial, and other professional applications, Gallet's MultiChron watches often incorporated a number of advanced timekeeping innovations. A Gallet timepiece of particular renown was the Flight Officer time zone chronograph. Commissioned by Senator Harry S. Truman in 1939 for pilots of the United States Army Air Forces, the Flight Officer (a.k.a. Flying Officer) had a rotating 12 hour bezel and the names of 48 major world cities printed on the periphery of the dial (face). These features made it possible to calculate changes in the time as an aviator flew across lines of longitude. Besides being the first time zone calculating wristwatch, the Flight Officer was one of the world’s first wrist chronographs to be housed in a water resistant case. Truman wore a Gallet Flight Officer during his terms as 33rd president (1945–1953). The modern Gallet Company is one of a small handful of independent Swiss watch brands that still maintain in-house manufacturing facilities. While recently expanding the company’s marketing focus to reach a wider audience of "civilian" consumers for its expensive professional-use timepieces, Gallet continues to privately produce components and modules for a number of other entities within the luxury-class timekeeping industry. GIRARD-PERREGAUX is a high-end Swiss watch manufacture with its origins dating back to 1791. It is situated in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland and is a part of the Sowind group, a subsidiary of PPR. In 1791, watchmaker and goldsmith Jean-François Bautte signed his first watches. He created a manufacturing company in Geneva grouping, for the first time ever, all the watch making facets of that time, which meant starting from the engineering of the watch all the way to the final hand assembly and hand polishing of each watch. In 1852, the watchmaker Constant Girard founded the Girard & Cie Firm in La Chaux-de-Fonds. He, then, married Marie Perregaux and the Girard-Perregaux Manufacture was born in 1856. In 1906, Constant Girard-Gallet, who took over control of the Manufacturer from his father, took over the Bautte House and merged it with Girard-Perregaux & Cie. Since then, the brand has pursued its activities by reinforcing from the 1980s its position in the domain of prestigious mechanical watches, Haute Horlogerie, under the lead of the Macaluso family. In 2011, Sowind Group, the holding incorporating Girard-Perregaux, became a subsidiary of PPR. The Manufacture has approximately 80 patents in the watch-making domain and is the originator of many innovative concepts. The Manufacture has approximately 80 patents in the watch-making domain and is the originator of many innovative concepts. It’s the emblematic model of Girard-Perregaux. In 1884, Constant Girard submitted to the United States Patent Office a patent of the design of the movement “Tourbillon with three gold bridges.” The three bridges, now the mobiles of the movement, were redesigned in the form of arrows and placed parallel to each other. The movement was no longer just a functional and technical element, but it also became an element of design in every way. In 1889, the Tourbillon with three gold bridges was awarded a gold medal at the Universal Exposition of Paris. In 1980, Girard-Perregaux decided to make 20 pieces to conform to the original of 1889: 1500 hours of work were necessary to create the first one. Since then, the Tourbillon with three gold bridges is offered in different versions, and is sometimes associated with other watchmakers’ complications. Out of the high-end watch collection, the most well known watches of Girard-Perregaux are: Vintage 1945 (with a rectangular case and a design inspired by an Art Deco style watch dating back to 1945), ww.tc (standing for worldwide time-control, this collection displays 24 time zones on the dial), Girard-Perregaux 1966, Laureato Evo, and the Cat’s Eye (from the feminine line). Girard-Perregaux is also famed for its signature complication piece: the Bi-Axial Tourbillon; it has released this complication in a number of limited edition watches, including the 2012 release of the Bi-Axial Tourbillon DLC Titanium wristwatch which renovated the trend in line with modern titanium cases. GREUBEL FORSEY is a watchmaking company specializing in very high-end complicated timepieces. It was launched in 2004 by Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey and is based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Greubel Forsey specialize in inventing timepieces with multiple tourbillons and inclined balance wheels with the aim of improve timekeeping precision. Their approach was validated in 2011 when a Greubel Forsey Double Tourbillon Technique won the 2011 International Chronometry Competition held by the Le Locle Museum of Horology. Greubel Forsey specializes in designing and manufacturing extremely high-end watches that are usually, but not exclusively, based on the Tourbillon escapement.
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