Revue Thommen
Brand History
Revue Thommen is born in 1853 in Waldenburg, in the canton of Basel-Landschaft, as the "Société d'Horlogerie à Waldenbourg": an initiative of the local community, launched to produce pocket watches and counter unemployment and emigration in the valley. In 1859 the business is taken over by Gédéon Thommen together with Louis Tschopp, and from 1869-70 Thommen becomes its sole owner, renaming it "Gédéon Thommen Uhrenfabrik": the beginning of a family management that, with some interruptions, continues to this day. From these early years the manufacture maintains vertical control over production, developing its own movements and components rather than limiting itself to assembly.
The "Revue" brand is registered in 1910 for wristwatches, while the company takes the form of Thommens Uhrenfabrik AG in 1905, under the leadership of Alphonse Thommen, Gédéon's son. A distinctive chapter opens in 1916, with the delivery of the first cockpit chronograph to the Swiss Air Force: from there the manufacture develops, between 1936 and 1943, an actual flight-instrument division — altimeters, airspeed indicators, rate-of-climb indicators, cockpit clocks — on commission from the Swiss military aviation, and from 1945 extends the production of altimeters to civilian mountaineers and parachutists as well. This dual identity, between wristwatches and precision aeronautical instruments, remains the most distinctive trait of the brand's history.
In the postwar period the name "Revue Thommen" progressively establishes itself as the main brand for watches, while in 1961 the company joins MSR, a grouping of independent Swiss manufactures. The quartz crisis of the 1970s-80s hits the group hard, and in 2000 Revue Thommen AG declares bankruptcy; watch production is taken over the following year by Grovana Uhrenfabrik AG, which ensures its continuity. The aviation instrument branch, meanwhile, continues as a separate activity (today Thommen Aircraft Equipment AG, reorganized in 2015-16). Since 2012 watch production has returned under the control of the Thommen family through GT Thommen Watch AG, which today offers collections inspired precisely by the brand's aeronautical and instrumental tradition.
