The first models of the brand (1894 – 1932)
The company’s history actually began in January 1894, when two watchmaker friends, Numa-Emile Descombes and Ulysse-Georges Perret, opened a watch workshop in Le Locle. At first, the workshop was engaged in the production of dials, cases and accessories for watches, but the ambitions of the two friends clearly extended much further. Already in the first years of its existence, the Universal Watch company, as the partners called their brainchild, filed a patent for a 24-hour indication in the format of a jumping hour. Descombes and Perret worked on this idea together with Louis-Edouard Berthoud. It was he who would become Ulysse Perret’s new partner after Descombes’ sudden death in 1897.
In 1898, Perret and Berthoud released the Universal Watch Extra pocket chronograph with a 30-minute counter, and in 1917, the developing brand’s lineup was expanded with one of the world’s first wrist chronographs.
Immediately after World War I, the company moved to Geneva. From that time on, watches with complications, in particular chronographs, became the brand’s priority.
The most iconic chronographs (1933 – 1966)
In 1933, at the height of the global economic crisis, Georges-Ulysse Perret died. His son Raoul joined the company, finding new investors for the family business. A year later, at the first watch salon in Basel, the company presented the Compur model – the first (in parallel with Breitling) two-button chronograph. The watch was equipped with two counters: a small seconds hand at the 9 o’clock mark and a 45-minute counter at the 3 o’clock mark.
In 1937, the company changed its name to Universal Genève. The high position of the brand in the watch market of that time is evidenced by the fact that in the 1930s and 1940s, the head office of Universal Genève was located on rue du Rhône, right between the Rolex and Patek Philippe buildings.
In 1940, the Aero-Compax model complemented the series of iconic chronographs on which Universal Genève built its reputation. Early examples of this model had an unusual layout with an additional counter at the 12 o’clock mark. This counter could be used as a “reminder”. For example, if the owner of the watch had an important meeting planned, using the button at the 9 o’clock mark, the time of this meeting could be set on the same additional counter. Universal Genève received 2 patents for this complication.
The Tri-Compax model is considered an iconic model of the golden age of the Swiss watch industry. In addition to the chronograph, the watch, first released for the 50th anniversary of Universal Genève, was equipped with an annual calendar with a date indicator and a moon phase indicator, which was located at the 12 o’clock mark.
A watch for flying over the North Pole
On November 15, 1954, an epochal event took place – the first commercial flight over the North Pole on the Copenhagen-Los Angeles route. The flight took place on a Scandinavian Airline System (SAS) aircraft. Six months before that, Universal Genève released a new Polarouter model, which would later be renamed Polerouter, especially for pilots.
The watch, created by order of the brand by the then-budding designer Gerald Genta, was equipped with antimagnetic protection. Another feature of the model was the first mechanism with a micro-rotor (caliber 215), developed jointly with Buren Watch.
