Favre Leuba

Legal records show that Abraham Favre opened a small watchmaker's business in Le Locle in 1737. His son, Henry-Auguste, merged in 1814 with the watch-dealer, A. Leuba. The eighth-generation descendants of Henry Favre took over the business in 1970.
Under the leadership of Henry Favre, born in 1908, the factory distinguished itself with a number of innovations launched from around 1950, including, for example, their own automatic caliber in 1956, the "Bivouac", a manually-wound wristwatch with mechanical altimeter in 1963, and the 1966 "Bathy 50" with a mechanical depth gauge. Similarly in the sixties, Favre-Leuba made itself known for its extraordinary twin-barreled movements, initially with manual winding and later with automatic winding. These movements - the caliber FL 1162 with a balance frequency of 36,000v/h - were fitted to the 1968 "Twinmatic" and "Duomatic" models. As a consequence of the quartz shock, the family company passed into the ownership of Benedom S.A., part of the Bacardi-Martini group, in 1985.