EXCEEDINGLY RARE and Beautiful ** Vintage Jaeger-LeCoultre 125th Anniversary Limited Edition Memovox International World Time Alarm Wristwatch, 1958 **
This exceptionally beautiful Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox Alarm Wristwatch is a RARE example of their original International World Time model. Its exquisite black dial with Time Zones of the World and gold hands as well as numerals/markers are perfectly encircled by the beautifully polished stainless steel case… which in turn is crowned by fully signed JLC [Jaeger-LeCoultre trademark] winding crowns.
In 1950, Jaeger-LeCoultre released the Memovox alarm wristwatch. The model name represented the combination of memoria and vox: “voice of memory”. The first models were hand wound and equipped with the Jaeger-LeCoultre calibre 489. Whilst that calibre was quite successful, the company quickly began work on a successor. A short run of less than 2’000 Calibre 601 models was followed by the introduction of Calibre 814 in 1953, available with or without a date display, and was much improved for servicing and reliability.
Alongside Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Reverso, the Memovox immediately gained recognition as a watershed in watchmaking achievement, so much so that the Company chose it as the symbolic culmination of their 125 year anniversary celebrations, issuing a limited number of World Time Memovox wristwatches.
Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox watches also were branded and sold by Cartier, Gubelin (under the brand name Ipsovox), and Van Cleef & Arpels.
Until 1980, all Jaeger-LeCoultre models including the Memovox, were sold as “LeCoultre”. For most of these watches the cases were locally produced in North America and distributed by Vacheron & Constantin LeCoultre, a subsidiary of Longines-Wittnauer, who also handled the final assembly there.
- Case: Stainless steel, fully signed “Cased and timed in the USA by LeCoultre”
- Dimensions: 33 mm excluding the winding crowns x 41 mm “lug to lug”
- Movement: Jaeger-LeCoultre Caliber 814, fully signed LeCoultre Co
- Winding crowns: Signed Jaeger-LeCoultre [trademark]
- Bracelet/buckle: New old stock. Alligator with original gold plated Jaeger LeCoultre JLC raised letters trademark on the buckle bridge.
- Condition: Excellent. Fully serviced by Master Swiss watchmaker
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Jaeger-LeCoultre history
In 1833, Antoine LeCoultre (1803-1881) founded a small watchmaking workshop in Le Sentier, Switzerland where he crafted high-quality timepieces.
During the two decade that ensued, LeCoultre’s inventions included some of the watchmaking art’s most important breakthroughs, so that in 1851 he was awarded a gold medal for his work on timepiece precision and Mechanization at the first Universal Exhibition in London.
In 1866, a time when the various operations involved in watchmaking still were decentralized amongst hundreds of small home/farm workshops, Antoine and his son, Elie LeCoultre (1842-1917), established the Swiss Vallée de Joux’s first full-fledged centralized manufacture (factory): LeCoultre & Cie., bringing together their employees’ combined expertise, all under one roof. In this manner, beginning 1870, they developed the first partially mechanised production processes for complicated watch movements.
By the end of that year the Manufacture employed 500 people and was known as the “Grande Maison de la Vallée de Joux”; by 1900 it had created over 350 different calibres, of which 128 were equipped with chronograph functions and 99 with repeater mechanisms. From 1902, and for the next 30 years, LeCoultre & Cie. produced most of the movement blanks for Patek Philippe of Geneva.
In 1903, the Paris-based Official Chronometer Maker to the French Navy, Edmond Jaeger, challenged Swiss manufacturers to develop and produce the ultra-thin movements he had invented. Jacques-David LeCoultre, Antoine’s grandson who was responsible for production at LeCoultre & Cie., accepted the challenge, giving rise to a collection of ultra-thin pocket watches, including the thinnest in the world in 1907 (the LeCoultre Calibre 145).
That same year French jeweller Cartier, one of Jaeger’s clients, signed a contract with the Parisian watchmaker under which all Jaeger movements for a period of fifteen years would be exclusive to Cartier. The movements were produced by LeCoultre.
In 1937, the collaboration between Jaeger and LeCoultre led to renaming the company Jaeger-LeCoultre; however from 1932 to 1976, due to the U.S. Smoot Hawley Tariff Act, the Company began to exclusively export watch movements out of Switzerland for the US/Canadian markets, rather than complete watches. These movements were fitted into locally manufactured cases in North America and sold under the name LeCoultre by Vacheron-LeCoultre, a subsidiary of Longines-Wittnauer. Only after 1985 was the name Jaeger-LeCoultre adopted uniformly worldwide.
From 1938 through 1965 Jaeger-LeCoultre merged with Vacheron & Constantin. Since 2000, Jaeger-LeCoultre is wholly owned by the Swiss-based luxury goods holding company Richemont SA… alongside Dunhill, Baume & Mercier SA, Cartier, IWC International Watch Co. AG, Montblanc, Piaget SA, Manufacture Roger Dubuis SA, Vacheron & Constantin SA, and Van Cleef & Arpels.
