A Watchmaker Who Reversed The Time

He takes his bicycle, rides for 20 kms and reaches a telephone booth. After that one phone call, Jaeger-LeCoultre was formed and Reverso was born to rule Polo.
There is a large manufacturer in a small and calm Joux Valley, hidden in snow and tall pine trees in Swiss Joux. Jaeger-LeCoultre stands here; away from the hustle and bustle of noisy streets. Boasted by 500-strong workforce inside the manufacturing field, there is no noise anywhere around. The work demands utmost precision and peace, for, some of the movements in a watch only have 100 or more components but the grandes complications along with the grandes sonneries contain almost 1000 components in a single watch.

The place where the excellence is brought to reality, the manufacturing plant of Jaeger-LeCoultre.
Image credit: www.utpieces.com

 

 

Jaeger-LeCoultre, a Swiss manufacturing watch brand was one of the first and still remains as one of the last, to assemble and make its own palette.
Jaeger-LeCoultre is a perfect example that explains how every long journey starts at a smaller ground but grows with zeal to enter the spark of the big cities.
When Jacques-David LeCoultre was still a child, his father transformed their small barn into a watchmaking atelier. Who would have thought that someone belonging to a family of blacksmith would strive to balance intellect and imagination. Allowing himself to the challenge of measuring time, Jacques-David LeCoultre too inherited the flare that drove his father's passion, which ultimately made Jaeger-LeCoultre.
It was at first the passion which lead to the results that today rules the world. It is rightly expressed that when somewhere in the world of inventions, when the heart desires, the universe conspires so as to convert desires into reality. Jaeger-LeCoultre is that story of desire turned into reality; he explains standing tall that dreams do come true.

 

 

 

 

 

The story of Jaeger-LeCoultre embodied with passion does not stand alone on that; instead it has a vision and an endless sense of knowledge and modernity. The actual flare of which was discovered in a polo match in India, where a British officer broke his watch in a furious polo match. This everyday incident clicked an officer strongly, after which he set himself to somehow find a watch which can withstand the fierce knocks of mallets and ball in the wrathful game of Polo. The enraged officer then sought after Cesar de Trey, a Swiss Businessman who was involved in the promotion of fine watches, and was travelling India as one of the spectators. The officer challenged the businessman to try finding a timekeeper that is resistant to shocks and breakage during the game.
 

 

 

 

Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso. Image Credit: monochrome-watches.com

 

 

On his return to Switzerland, de Trey, contacted Jacques-David LeCoultre who was then an inherited watchmaker working closely with Edmund Jaeger, a Paris based watchmaker who once challenged the Swiss watchmakers to develop a watch with ultra thin movements. Hearing the news, Jacques-David LeCoultre took his bicycle and rode for 20 kilometres to the nearest telephone booth. And hence, a close friendship was forged after that one phone call.

 

 

 

 

It was in then in 1931 that Jaeger-LeCoultre created an iconic watch - Reverso. An elegant and unique construction that allowed the case of the watch to be swivelled in order to guard the dial from the impacts received during the game. A rare timekeeper of Polo was then born named Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso.