Cartier Watches – Fashionable and Pioneer Watches’ History and Evolution

Photo Credits Flickr

Wrist watches were born in 20th century and before this era pocket watches were commonly known as time instruments. Although Patek Philippe already had created the wrist watch but it was mainly considered as women watch. Alfred Cartier was the person who made wrist watches a man’s watch. He friend Santos asked for a solution for time keeping while flight duration as a pocket watch was difficult to read. Cartier made the first watch (recognizable) for Santos. People came to know about the Cartier Watch when saw it worn by Santos in newspapers (after his first 220 meters long flight).

History of Cartier Watches

Cartier Santos was the first men’s wrist watch model and later we saw a huge collection of Cartier watches, but how all this started?   In 1847 Louis Cartier took over the business of jewelry who owned by his master. Louis Cartier was born in 1819. Louis Alfred, who was the son of the Cartier, started participating in the business of his father in 1874 that era can be marked as the bookmark of Cartier Family business and can be named as the Golden era.

Through that period till 1906, there were many Cartier watch models introduced but none of them got any popularity. At those times, wrist watches were mainly known as a women’s watch or a jewel accessory. In 1906, Cartier made its first watch for Santos Dumont, who is known as the first aviation flight that prolonged to 220 meters. Cartier watches named that watch as Cartier Santos, and it is still in production at the time I am writing since then. Alfred Cartier, who took over the business from his father in 1874, his kids, took it to another level later and made the Cartier Business a Global fashion and wrist watch company. All three of them, Louis, Jaques and Pierre kept running their family business and expanded it to rest of the world like Japan, China, USA and more. It was not limited to Paris only.

Photo credits flickr

Evolution of Cartier Watches

Cartier Santos was not the first watch that Louis Cartier made for his friend. There were some models that were being introduced by Cartier before that. One of the kinds of time pieces was a Mystery Clock, which was sort of transparent dial and hidden mechanism. Later Louis Cartier signed an agreement with Edmond Jaeger to provide movements for Cartier. During this era from 1907 to 1920, Cartier introduced many models including The Baignoire and Tortue models. Later in 1917, Louis Cartier introduced another design which was an inspiration from tanks that were used in World War II. All of these models still are in production since then. We can find watches from Cartier from that era, and they used movements from other manufacturers also.  Vacheron Constantin, Audemars-Piguet, Movado and LeCoultre are famous watch manufacturer, and we can find Cartier watches with their movements. In 1920s, Cartier started a company with Edmond Jaeger to produce movements solely for Cartier. At that time, Cartier came into being as a popular watch brand. Popular brands of Cartier are listed below.

•   Calibre de Cartier
• Pasha de Cartier
• Ligne 21 de Cartier
• Tank
• Santos de Cartier
• Baignoire
• Tonneau
• Ballon Bleu de Cartier