HEUER, Tag HEUER, HEUER-Leonidas… What is the name of the swiss watches and stopwatches manufacturer ?
The compagny was founded in 1860 by Edouard Heuer. From 1860 to 1964 the name was simply HEUER (say Hoyer).
In 1964, HEUER merged with the watch maker Leonidas and the firm changed its name to ” HEUER-Leonidas “, altought, most of time, just HEUER was printed on the dial. HEUER-Leonidas could be engraved on the caliber and often displayed on the side of the box.
Brand Leonidas was sometimes used, mainly on trackmaster series (8042 and 8047).
After being bought out by Piaget in 1982, HEUER joined the group Tag (Technique d’Avant Garde) in 1985 and became Tag-HEUER. Jack Heuer is the last member of the Heuer familly to manage the manafacture.
From the early nineties, while Tag took control of HEUER, stopwatches stopped being presented in catalog.
Today Tag HEUER is still a time-keeper and keeps making and designing stopwatches, but far from the vintage mecanical stopwatches. Excepted some reeditions of iconic mecanical dashboard stopwatches, new timing instruments are very hightly accurate electonical devices whose ancestors are the microsplits of the ’70s.
The Tag HEUER Time-keeping division is a special department apart from the manufacture of watches. Except a Suprem edition of the “pocket pro”, stopwatches and timing devices are only known by professional.
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