Tag Heuer is a company that produces luxury timepieces. It is famous for its chronographs and sports watches. Tag Heuer is a section of LVMH, a company that produces luxury goods.

The company had its beginnings in 1860 when a watch-making business was established by Edouard Heuer in St-Imier, Switzerland. In 1882, Heuer patented his first timepiece. An “oscillating opinion” was patented by the company in 1887, and this is still being used up to the present time, used for mechanical chronographs.

The first dashboard stopwatch, “Time of Trip” was patented by Heuer in 1911. In 1914, the first wrist stopwatch of Heuer Company was launched. The first chronograph that is 1/100th of a second accurate, called the “Micrograph” was introduced in 1916. The “Semikrograph” then followed the “Micrograph” shortly.

Used for aviation and automobiles, “Autavia”, the dashboard timer, first appeared in 1932.

The “Auto-Graph” and the “seafarer” are watches that are produced for Ambercrombie & Fitch, an American retailer, in the early 1950’s.

Watches to be put up on the boats, automobiles dashboard, and aircrafts were produced by Heuer from as early as 1911. Timing gadgets for motor racing and ski competitions were also launched in the 1950’s. The company launched in 1958, a new line of watches on dashboard. The Monte Carlo, the Super Autavia, the Master Time, Auto-Rallye and Sebring were included in the line of dashboard watches. These watches on dashboards were produced until their discontinuity in 1980’s.

“Flieger” chronographs were produced for the German air force pilots from 1935 until the early 1940’s. The expansion of Heuer’s line of watches made it possible to include two and three register models with a full calendar function.

Both amateur and professional car racers adore the watches of Heuer starting from the 1950’s to up to the 1970’s. Heuer came to be the first Swiss maker of watches in space. John Glenn, who navigated the Mercury Atlas 6 spacecraft, wore a stopwatch made by Heuer. The company launched in the same year the Autavia chronograph that featured a bezel that turns around. In 1963, the chronograph created by Jack Heuer, the Carrera was released.

Tag Heuer History in the early 1960’s, the brand “Leonidas” was acquired by Heuer. The “Bundeswehr” chronograph is one of the designs that the company obtained from Leonidas. The Air Force of Germany used this chronograph.

The partnership of Heuer with Hamilton and Breitling started in the the middle of 1960’s. They aimed to launch the first automatic chronograph in the world. Carrera, Monaco and Autavia were the first automatic chronographs of Heuer. Carrera was powered by Caliber 14 movement, Monaco by the 15 Caliber movements and Autavia by the movements Caliber 11 and Caliber 12.

To include the Montreal, Monza, Daytona, Calculator, Jarama, and Silverstone models that were all powered by the Cal 12 movement, the line of automatic chronographs was enlarged. A special version of the Autavia which is black-dialed was produced by Heuer for the cigarette company Viceroy, which offered the Autavia for $88 in a special marketing promotion.

Digital chronograph with double LCD and LED displays was launched by Heuer in 1975. The company launched a succession of Chronographs that are powered by the 5100 movement of Lemania.

The acquisition of Heuer by the Techniques d’Avant Garde or TAG in 1985 formed the TAG Heuer. Tag Heuer entered into a partnership with the leading transponder timing company in Europe, the CHRONELEC.

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