A Tale of Timekeeping Evolution for 170 YearsPrecision through Ingenuity: Ulysse Nardin
Technology is driving the world at unfathomable speed. For watchmaking manufacture Ulysse Nardin, it has cap-tained its course for almost two centuries. Calculating the waning and waxing of the moon to harness time and tides with exactitude, Ulysse Nardin changed how the world told time.
Innovation upon innovation, it steers the craft into the future, marrying the age-old art of Haute Horlogerie with transformative technology, astounding with breakthrough performance and original design.
Founded in 1846 by 23-year-old Ulysse Nardin, the brand that bears his name carries on his entrepreneurial spirit, always thinking about the next great development. Trained as a complicated watch specialist, Ulysse Nardin had his sights set on a sparkling horizon. He started his business in his birthplace of Le Locle, Switzerland, situated in the Swiss Jura, home to the specialized watchmaking industry.
Young Ulysse Nardin noted the rising demand for marine and pocket chronometers, equipping navies and inter-national shipping companies with marine deck chronometers in the 1870s. These early timekeeping innovations were prized for their accuracy, improving efficiency of trade, contributing to modern society and charting the course for the manufacture’s future.
There was no stopping the development of the Ulysse Nardin name. Originating from skill and strategy; fostered by an in-depth horological ecosystem; driven by a continuous stream of innovative ideas; and run by a culture with a progressive mindset, Ulysse Nardin embodies a legacy and future filled with resilience, change, and pio-neering style paired with science.
Over the decades, Ulysse Nardin secured 4,300-plus watchmaking awards, 18 of which are gold medals. How-ever, in 1983 things became even more interesting. Rolf W. Schnyder took over the company and joined forces with Dr. Ludwig Oechslin; together they formed a collaboration that has been crowned with monumental achieve-ments.
Some of their most notable accomplishments include the introduction of iconic timepieces like the 1996 Perpetual Calendar, whose calendar can be set forward and backward with ease, part of the Classic Collection. Or the 2001 arrival of the Freak, which tells time by its movement, not by its hands. The Freak set the stage for Ulysse Nar-din’s development of exciting, novel mechanisms. In the Marine collection, the seafaring past of Ulysse Nardin is revealed: the legend lives on.
Other cutting-edge advances comprise Ulysse Nardin being the first watchmaker to incorporate the use of silicium technology, and the development of groundbreaking movements such as the Dual Ulysse escapement, Ulysse Anchor and the UlyChoc shock absorber.
Ulysse Nardin pursues its innovative course with its three fundamentals as a guiding constellation. Firstly, ever more independence of spirit, continue to develop and manufacture an increasing number of components, move-ments and timepieces in-house. Secondly, while it already holds a great number of patents in mechanical watch-making, the company continues too in its quest for technical avant-garde, pushing back the limits of design, engi-neering and technology. And finally, the watchmaker upholds its heritage of craft, celebrating the savoir-faire of the centuries through its métiers d’art – enameling, miniature painting – and through the enduring skill of its talented watchmakers.