Ulysse Nardin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ulysse Nardin is a watch manufacturer founded in 1846 in Le Locle, Switzerland. Historically Ulysse Nardin was best known for being a manufacturer of marine chronometers, but today Ulysse Nardin produces complicated mechanical watches.

[edit] History

Founder, watchmaker Ulysse Nardin, was an accomplished watchmaker who studied horology under his father, Leonard-Frederic Nardin, Frederic William Dubois and Louis JeanRichard-dit-Bressel, in Switzerland.^{[citation needed]}

Before the advent of quartz timepieces, merchant and military ships relied on highly accurate mechanical timepieces known as marine chronometers. The best known of these was the M,GR.F model by Ulysse Nardin.^{[citation needed]} Copies of this model were used by Hamilton to supply the US Navy and by Seiko for the Japanese navy. Of the 4,504 certificates for marine chronometers issued 4,324 were issued to Ulysse Nardin (Lucien F Trueb, Watchtime).

[edit] Revival

In 1983 Ulysse Nardin was acquired by businessman Rolf Schynder who, in conjunction with watchmaker Dr. Ludwig Oechslin, relaunched the brand. Schnyder and Oechslin designed and created complicated timepieces using modern materials and manufacturing techniques.

The first example of Ulysse Nardin's new approach was the Astrolabium (1985), which displays local and solar time the orbits of the orbits and eclipses of the sun and moon as well as the positions of several major stars. This watch entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1989 as the world's most complicated wristwatch. Oechslin followed up the Astrolabium with two other astronimical watches, the Planetarium Copernicus (1988) and the Tellurium Johannes Kepler (1992).

Other notable complicated watches are the GMT± Perpetual (1999), that combines a perpetual calendar with the GMT± complication (one-press buttons that adjust the hour hand back and forth for international travellers), and the Freak (2001) a tourbillon watch with no hands or crown.

Ulysse Nardin also revived the use of enameling in watchmaking, with a series of watches featuring enameled and cloisonné faces.^{[citation needed]}