Luminor

The name Luminor derives from the patent filed by Panerai in 1949 for a new tritium-based self-luminous substance, intended to replace the radioactive Radiomir in the coating of hands and indices. Within a few years, however, that name stopped indicating just a material and began identifying a precise case architecture as well: in 1956 Panerai patented the device that would remain forever associated with the line, a lever bridge that covers and locks the winding crown, isolating it from water pressure and making it operable even with divers' thick gloves.

For much of the twentieth century these watches remained military instruments of very low commercial visibility: after the Second World War, references such as the 6152/1 were supplied in small series not only to the Italian Navy but also to the Israeli Navy and, in some variants known as "Egyptian", to the Egyptian Navy, always with the same massive case and the same locking-bridge crown, practically unchanged from decade to decade.

It is with the brand's civilian relaunch, between 1993 and the late 1990s, that the Luminor became a permanent catalogue collection and, very soon, the image most immediately associated with the brand: generous cases of 44 mm and beyond, the "1950" execution which in 2002 recovered the proportions and wire lugs of the pre-war references, and over time the adoption of in-house calibers developed after the opening of the Neuchâtel manufacture — from the manual calibers of the P.6000 family to the automatic P.9000/P.9010 — up to thinner variants such as the Luminor Due, designed for those seeking the same aesthetic in a more compact size.