Glycine
Brand History
Glycine was founded in 1914 in Biel/Bienne, at the heart of the Swiss Jura Arc, on the initiative of watchmaker Eugène Meylan, who founded the company under the name "La Glycine." In the following decades ownership changed hands several times — in 1916 watchmakers Piccola and Joffrette joined as partners, and in 1922 the company passed to Ferdinand Engel and George Flury — but the brand always kept its production base in the Biel region, historically one of the densest watchmaking districts in Switzerland. Already by 1930 Glycine stood out for a significant technical contribution: among the first manufactures to produce automatic watches on an industrial scale, thanks to a winding mechanism developed in collaboration with Meylan himself.
The turning point that made Glycine an internationally known name came in 1953 with the launch of the Airman, a pilot's watch with a 24-hour dial and rotating bezel designed for those who needed to track multiple time zones in flight — a solution Glycine brought to market before other Swiss brands offered similar bezels for the same purpose. In 1967 the catalog expanded with the Combat, designed no longer for aviation but for military and outdoor use "on the ground," with watertight cases built in collaboration with specialized supplier EPSA, typical of Swiss tool-watch making of those years.
Over the following decades Glycine remained a brand of modest size compared to the large watchmaking groups, but continued to develop its two main lines — the aeronautical one and the military/diving one — alongside more occasional collections. In 2016 the brand was acquired by the American Invicta Watch Group, which has kept its historic headquarters in Biel/Bienne while continuing to offer the Airman and Combat as the heart of the catalog, together with modern reinterpretations of the brand's vintage dive models.
