Swiss Longines Wittnauer Gold Tone Wristwatch with Black Leather Band, AS IS. Blue and black round face, marked stainless steel on back. 

We cannot guarantee the working condition of any timepiece.

Size: 1 1/2 x 9 1/4 in. 

Compagnie des Montres Longines, Francillon S.A. (known simply as Longines) is a Swiss luxury watchmaker based in Saint-Imier, Switzerland. It was founded by Auguste Agassiz in 1832 under the name Reiguel Jeune & Cie. In 1846 Agassiz’s two partners, lawyers Henri Raiguel and Florian Morel, had retired, leaving him as the sole company leader. When Agassiz began suffering from ill health in the late 1860s he passed leadership on to his nephew, Ernest Francillon, who extensively modernized the company and their manufacturing process. They routinely studied evolving styles and mechanisms in America, making their pieces some of the most sought after in Europe by the 1890s. A series of economic downturns, in part caused by a large number of imitators producing similar pieces to theirs, eventually led them to downsize, and they began producing wrist watches for the first time in 1927. In the aftermath of World War II they acquired A. Wittnauer Company, a watch and clock maker founded in New Rochelle, New York in 1885 by a Swiss immigrant, and the two companies marketed similar lines of watches under both brand names while maintaining separate factories from 1950 onward. In 1983 the company became a subsidiary of Allgemeine Gesellschaft der Schweizerischen Uhrenindustrie (now known as the Swiss Swatch Group), and in 1989 they celebrated the 100th anniversary of their winged hourglass shape and logo, which is still the oldest unchanged active trademark registered with WIPO. In the 1990s Swatch began to reposition its acquisitions to better compete with Rolex and Cartier, with Omega becoming their high-end brand and Longines downgraded to a less-expensive segment. In 2001 Wittnauer was sold to Bulova for $11.6 million, ending the collaboration between them and Longines, which is still producing goods at the same factory in Switzerland to this day.

#5595 .