Key Takeaways

  • Revue Thommen was founded in 1853 by Gédéon Thommen in Waldenburg, Switzerland, and has operated for more than 170 years
  • The company built precision aircraft instruments for the Swiss Air Force starting in the 1930s, including altimeters, airspeed indicators, and aircraft clocks
  • A full bankruptcy in 2000 nearly ended the brand, but Grovana Uhrenfabrik AG revived Revue Thommen’s watchmaking business in 2001
  • The Cricket alarm watch, developed in 1947, is reported to have been worn by multiple U.S. presidents starting with Harry S. Truman
  • Vaiana Express carries the current Revue Thommen watch collection for collectors interested in this heritage brand

Most watch brands with 170 years of history make sure everyone knows it. Revue Thommen took a quieter path, building instruments that pilots, mountain climbers, and military officers trusted with their lives, while spending far less time polishing a marketing story. That history is worth understanding before adding one of these watches to a collection.

170 Years, One Bankruptcy, Still Ticking

A brand that survives 170 years without a single stumble usually turns out to be exaggerating something. Revue Thommen’s story includes a genuine bankruptcy, a rescue by another Swiss manufacturer, and a family that came back to lead the company decades later. That combination of hardship and continuity is rare in Swiss horology, where many historic names have long since been folded into large conglomerate groups with no family involvement left at all.

For collectors trying to separate real heritage from invented backstory, Revue Thommen offers an unusually well-documented paper trail, tracing the brand’s founding in a small Swiss valley town through its aviation contracts and its eventual revival – a useful reference for anyone weighing this name against better-known luxury brands.

Founded in a Swiss Valley, 1853

The story starts in 1853, in Waldenburg, Switzerland, a small town along the Basel-Geneva route where a watchmaking operation was founded to create local jobs. Later, Gédéon Thommen and Louis Tschopp acquired and restructured the company; by 1869, Thommen was the sole owner, renaming it “Gédéon Thommen – Uhrenfabrikation.” Thommen’s industrial ambitions did not stop at watches – he also founded the Waldenburgerbahn, a steam railway connecting the valley’s villages, showing the same drive for precision engineering that would define the watch business for generations.

Early Revue Thommen wristwatches and pocket watches relied entirely on the company’s own in-house movements, a level of vertical control that was not universal even among Swiss manufacturers of that era. The Revue trademark was registered in 1910, though the company would not settle on the name most collectors recognize today, Revue Thommen, until 1960. By 1875, the company had also started producing lever watches alongside its earlier cylinder watches, and production eventually grew to a substantial annual watch output under Gédéon Thommen’s leadership.

Building Instruments for the Swiss Air Force

Revue Thommen’s most distinctive chapter has little to do with wristwatches at all. Starting in the 1930s, the company built precision instruments for aviation, a business line that would come to define much of its 20th-century identity and separate it from nearly every other Swiss watchmaker of the period.

First Aircraft Clock in 1916

Well before the formal aviation contracts began, Revue Thommen built the first aircraft chronograph for the Swiss Air Force in 1916. That early project laid the groundwork for decades of military instrument work and established the company as a serious name in precision timing for aviation long before “pilot watch” became a marketing category.

Cockpit Contracts of the 1930s and 40s

From 1936 to 1943, Revue Thommen held a formal development and production contract to supply cockpit instrumentation to the Swiss Air Force. That work included:

  • Altimeters and airspeed indicators
  • Vertical speed indicators
  • Aircraft clocks
  • Landing gear components for the Swiss EKW C-35 military biplane

By 1945, that same aviation expertise crossed over into civilian and sporting use with a pocket altimeter built for mountain climbers, later adapted for parachutists. Through the following decades, the company reports supplying on-board clocks to more than eighty civil aviation companies and military air fleets. Instruments built for cockpits and mountainsides do not get a pass on accuracy; they either hold up under real pressure, or people get hurt. That standard, inherited from decades of instrument work, still shapes how the brand approaches watchmaking today.

The Cricket: A Watch for Presidents

Some of Revue Thommen’s most celebrated milestones happened outside the cockpit. In 1947, the company’s Waldenburg watchmakers developed the Cricket, a mechanical alarm watch named for the distinctive chirping sound of its alarm mechanism. Building a wristwatch with a genuinely audible, reliable mechanical alarm was a real feat of miniaturized engineering at the time, achieved with gears and springs rather than any electronic assistance.

The Cricket became known internationally as “the president’s watch,” reportedly worn by multiple U.S. presidents during the mid-20th century, starting with a watch presented to President Harry S. Truman. That tradition is said to have continued across administrations, with even Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev reportedly receiving one. Whatever the exact tally of world leaders who wore one, the Cricket remains one of the brand’s most celebrated products and a point of real pride for the company today.

Quartz Crisis Leads to Bankruptcy

No account of Revue Thommen’s history holds up without the hard years. Like most of the Swiss watch industry, the company was hit hard by the quartz crisis of the 1970s and 80s, when inexpensive, highly accurate quartz movements from Japan devastated traditional mechanical watchmakers around the world. In 1987, “Thommens Uhrenfabrik AG” launched the unified “Revue Thommen” brand specifically to create clearer positioning in international markets, a response to the competitive pressure the company was under.

Closure and Collapse by 2000

The following decade brought further strain. Revue Thommen became increasingly dependent on Asian markets through the 1980s and 90s, and financial pressure mounted toward the end of that period. In 1999, the company closed its La Chaux-de-Fonds production facility, consolidating operations back to Waldenburg as a cost-saving measure. It was not enough to prevent the outcome: by July 2000, Revue Thommen was bankrupt, and a 148-year-old name looked ready to disappear entirely.

Grovana’s 2001 Rescue

The story did not end there. In 2001, Grovana Uhrenfabrik AG acquired the rights to Revue Thommen’s watchmaking business, taking over production and worldwide distribution. Grovana made the choice to revive the brand rather than let it fade out, and following an interruption of several years, resumed production of manufacture movements for Revue Thommen watches, built around the GT44, GT54, GT56, GT12, and GT14 movement ranges the company had developed over previous decades.

A Family Name Carries On

A watch brand surviving bankruptcy is notable on its own. A brand where the founder’s own family returns to lead it afterward is rarer still. Andreas Thommen, a descendant of founder Gédéon Thommen, later took over operational leadership of the brand alongside partners, forming GT Thommen Watch AG. That makes Revue Thommen a genuine multi-generation family watchmaking operation, with the fifth generation of the Thommen family now involved in running the company more than 170 years after it began.

GT Thommen Watch AG continues building on both sides of the company’s heritage: durably engineered Swiss-made watches for collectors, alongside instrument work that draws on nearly a century of aviation engineering experience. That dual identity, part watchmaker and part instrument builder, remains unusual even among long-established Swiss houses.

A Legacy Built to Survive Hardship

Taken together, the details form a fuller picture than most watch brands can offer: a company founded to create jobs in a small Swiss valley, dozens of in-house movements designed over its history, cockpit instrument contracts with an actual air force, a watch tied to the American presidency, a real bankruptcy, and a family-led revival that is still operating today. That combination of documented highs and lows is difficult to manufacture through marketing alone.

For collectors comparing Revue Thommen against better-known luxury names, that track record provides a different kind of reassurance than brand recognition. A company that has weathered the quartz crisis, a full bankruptcy, and a change of ownership, only to keep building the same kind of durably engineered, aviation-informed watches, has already proven something that a slick advertising budget cannot fake. Anyone drawn to that story can start by browsing Swiss automatic watches built with that same century-plus engineering standard in mind.

Vaiana Express
jerry@VaianaExpress.com
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