Tag Heuer Watches

Founded in 1860 by Edouard Heuer in St-Imier, Switzerland, TAG was formed when the TAG group purchased the company forming TAG Heuer. TAG stands for "Techniques d'Avant Garde" in addition to the founder's surname. In 1882 and 1887, the first chronograph was patented by Edouard Heuer and was dubbed the "oscillating pinion" which is still used by major watchmakers of mechanical chronographs. In 1911, the first dashboard chronograph was patented and dubbed the "Time of Trip". Designed for use in aircrafts and automobiles, the two large hands from the center of the dial were to indicate the time of day while a smaller pair of hands at the top of the dial indicated the duration of the trip. In 1914 the first wrist chronograph was introduced and in 1916, Edouard Heuer's son, Charles-Auguste, introduced the Mikrograph, which was the first stopwatch that was accurate to 1/100th of a second. In 1933 the Autavia was introduced which took the first part of the words AUTomobile and AVIAtion and hence named. In the 60s, Tag Heuer partnered with Breitling and Hamilton to introduce a new automatic chronograph and was in competition with Seiko and Zenith. Tag Heuer's first automatic chronographs were the Autavia, Carrera, and Monaco.