Timing Exhibition Room

Thanks to the technical expertise developed within the Manufacture, in 1878 Longines introduced a simple chronograph together with machines it had designed itself to ensure regular production. This equipment marked the company’s entry into the world of time measurement, a field in which it excelled during the 20th century. The timing devices that Longines developed over the years enabled it to build a special relationship with the world of sport, and its involvement in high-performance timing played a key role in its growth. The Museum’s Timing Exhibition Room displays the equipment that Longines has created to measure the time of certain events. It ranges from the automatic “broken wire” timing system, introduced at the Federal Gymnastics Meeting in 1912, to the mechanical pocket timer with a radio signal that was used in Formula 1 until the 1990s. Also on display is the Photogines, the first mechanism to link a control image to measured time in 1952, and the Contifort, the first to link timing to a moving image in 1960. This history of timing mechanisms developed by the Manufacture at Saint-Imier explains how the requirement of sports for accurate timing has been a springboard for the development of new technology, led by Longines, in particular.