So, I was just sitting around the other day, you know, looking at my wrist, not even at a particularly fancy watch, just my everyday beater. And a thought just popped into my head – who’s actually been doing this watch-making thing the longest? Like, the absolute oldest company still kicking?
My first instinct, of course, was to just punch it into a search engine. Something like “oldest watch maker still around.” And let me tell you, the internet, as usual, threw a whole bunch of stuff at me. It wasn’t as straightforward as I thought. Some articles were talking about who invented the first portable timepiece, which is interesting, sure, but not quite what I was after. I wanted the company, the brand, that has the longest continuous history. It’s like trying to find the oldest restaurant – some close and reopen, some change hands a dozen times. It gets messy.
I spent a good chunk of time clicking through various links. Some sites were pushing one name, others another. It felt like everyone had a different story. It reminded me of when I was trying to figure out the best way to fix a leaky faucet last year; ten different plumbers online, ten different “guaranteed” solutions. You end up more confused than when you started sometimes. I had to really dig to filter out the marketing speak from the actual historical claims.
I was specifically trying to nail down a few things:
- Which company had the earliest founding date?
- Are they still in operation today, making watches?
- Is it genuinely the same continuous entity, not just a revived nameplate?
That last one is tricky, you know? Lots of old brands get bought and sold.
After a while, sifting through all that, one name started to appear more consistently as the genuine article, the one that ticked all the boxes for “oldest in continuous operation.” It wasn’t one of the names that first jumped into my head, surprisingly.
So, Who Is It Then?
Alright, after all that digging, the answer I kept landing on was Blancpain. Apparently, this company was started by a chap named Jehan-Jacques Blancpain. And get this – he set up shop way, way back in 1735. I had to read that date a couple of times. 1735! That’s seriously old. Like, before revolutions and stuff old. It’s kind of mind-boggling to think that a business, any business, could survive for that long, through all the wars and economic ups and downs, still making basically the same thing.
It’s pretty wild to think about someone starting a watch workshop in a small Swiss village back then, and that same name, that same heritage, is still on high-end watches today. Makes you wonder what old Jehan-Jacques would think if he saw the watches they make now, or even just the world today. Probably be quite an eye-opener for him.
So, yeah, that was my little dive into the world of ancient watchmakers. Just a random question that led me down a bit of an internet rabbit hole, but I came out with a new bit of trivia. Blancpain. Who knew? Well, I do now, and so do you if you’ve read this far. Pretty neat, huh?
