Vacheron Constantin Watches at European Watch Co.

Jean-Marc Vacheron (1731-1805) opened his workshop in Geneva in 1755. A younger contemporary of pioneering watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet, Vacheron was a superb craftsman, cabinotier, and an eager horologist. His first notable creation, the Silver Watch, had its key-wound movement secured to the solid silver case. In 1770 Vacheron made his first complication timepieces and in 1779 he produced the first engine-tuned dials, an innovation eventually adopted by every great watchmaker. In 1785 Jean-Marc's son, Abraham, took command of the business and saw it through the decade of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1799.

In 1839 Vacheron & Constantin employed inventor and watchmaker Georges-Auguste Leschot to develop machine tooling for the making of ebauches (up to 1850 an ebauche consisted of the raw mechanisms for a watch, including two plates with bars and pillars, the barrel, fusee, pawl, ratchet-wheel, index, and the appropriate screws for assembly). Leschot had worked for years designing lever escapements that could be manufactured using machines. Serial production was the key to the future and soon he was the supervisor of manufacturing and the technical director, making Vacheron & Constantin the first modern industrial watch manufacture in Switzerland by 1842. Leschot was also the first watchmaker to standardize movements into calibers, and by 1845 the company was making its own, selling escapements and ebauches to other watchmakers. Leschot was also the first to invent a pantographic device that mechanically engraved dials and other small watch components, and allowed for the mechanical duplication of various watch parts. This brought watchmaking into the industrial age; Leschot was awarded a gold medal from the Arts Society of Geneva in 1844. This tremendously enhanced Vacheron's reputation and prestige.

The official company name was once again changed in 1877 to "Vacheron & Constantin, Fabricants, Geneve." In 1880 they began using the symbol of the Maltese cross, getting a patent on it in 1890. It's their logo to this day; while people are always curious to its meaning, it was actually inspired by a component of the watch barrel, which had a cross-shape, designed for governing the tension in the mainspring. In 1885 the firm made the first nonmagnetic timepiece that included a balance spring, lever shaft, and balance wheel made from palladium, bronze lever arms, and an escape wheel in gold. 1887 marked the incorporation of “Vacheron & Constantin,” the name fixed by legal charter. It was then reorganized into a stock company, spurred on by the winning of a gold medal from the Swiss National Exhibition in Geneva (another gold medal for achievement was awarded to them at the Geneva exhibition in 1896).

In 1955 Vacheron & Constantin turned two-hundred years old and celebrated by introducing one of the thinnest watches ever made with a caliber movement only 1.64 mm thick. The Big Four Summit Conference was held in Geneva with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Edgar Faure, N.A. Bulganin, and Sir Anthony Eden. A group of prominent Swiss executives commissioned Vacheron to make four special, matching wristwatches as gifts to the four heads of state.

When George Ketterer died in 1969, his son, Jacques, who kept the company going through the Japanese quartz movement revolution, sustained the business. In 1970 the company dropped the “&,” becoming Vacheron Constantin. In 1972 they presented the radical watch that won the coveted "Diplôme du Prestige de la France," in Paris. It was a skewed, asymmetrical tonneau shape that was an aesthetic smash. Vacheron produced Kallista in 1979, one of the world's most expensive, complicated watches. Kallista required 6,000 hours for the Vacheron masters to make, while the jewelers spent an additional 20 months enhancing it with 118 supreme emerald-cut diamonds. The original asking price was $5 million, a stunning amount, but nowhere near as shocking as the $11 million it'ss valued at today.

Jacques Ketterer died in 1987, and Vacheron Constantin changed hands as watch aficionado Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani – the former Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia and Harvard MBA – became the majority stockholder, at which time the company became a part of Investcorp. In 1994 Vacheron paid homage to the 400thanniversary of the death of mathematician, geographer, and master cartographer, Gerhard Kremer, called Mercator. They debuted a limited edition pair of watches with hand-enameled dials painted with Mercator's navigational hemisphere maps, and with compass-shaped hands made especially for the timepieces. In 1996 the Richemont Group, who is still in control today, purchased the share capital of Vacheron Constantin.

2000 began the 3rd century of Vacheron watchmaking and to celebrate they created their Patrimony line, some of the thinnest mechanical watches in the world, measuring only 5.25 mm thick. For the millennium, they were focusing on more contemporary, modern designs. In 2003 they presented a sports line named Overseas, as well as their first collection just for women, called Egèrie. They moved into their newly renovated manufacture and corporate headquarters in Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva in 2004. It contains a patrimonial space and the master watchmaker's workshops, as well as their famous, exclusive boutique.