Vintage Watches

1856. that was yesterday...Baudelaire was gathering his "Fleurs du Mal" Darwin tracing man's descent from the apes, Karl Marx pondering his "Manifesto"; Wagner's "Lohengrin" enriched the world of music, and the Suez Canal was under construction. 1856?  

In the Swiss canton of Soleure two men established the future Eterna. One of them persevered Urs Schild, the founder of the firm. Diligent, responsible, a sound technician and an indefatigable worker, he determined to establish in Grenchen the standard of watchmaking practiced by Geneva craftsmen. Not only did he achieve this ambition, but also the honor of being elected to the National Council of the Swiss Confederation. When he died, his son Max, high-spirited, volatile and a keen innovator, paid a visit to the United Stales. He returned to introduce, in the midst of manual craftsmen, machinery.

"Quality... Productivity... Rationalization...", Max Schild was ahead of his time and his ideas were unpopular. Disillusioned, he took his leave. His brother Theodore took the helm on the threshold of the 20lh century and with him Eterna entered modern times.
Though modest in size, Switzerland was beginning an invasion of world markets. Eterna was established in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, New York. 1914 saw a sensation at the National Fair: an alarm wristwatch displayed by Eterna. A prototype or a curiosity? The shape of things to come was predicted by the Hexa model, a pocket watch which wound itself automatically when the cover was closed!

Interested buyers arriving from all parts of the world acclaimed the new models with enthusiasm and laid the foundations of what it was call the Eterna World Service. Came the inflation of 1920 and with it catastrophe. The watchmaking industry emerged, shaken. Theodore Schild had fought and won a mighty battle. And now begin the decisive years for the Swiss watchmaking industry. The public has become selective. "Swiss Made" alone is no longer enough, it is the brand that counts.

Eterna maps its future course and launches its selfwinding watch, the Eterna-Matic. The watch making industry has discovered a new concept. The Eterna-Matic was the first watch to wind itself automatically by means of a ball-bearing. This was revolutionary. Eterna had replaced the wear and tear of friction by a self-polishing ball bearing.  Then Eterna, always a leader in the field, goes one better and launches the ladies 'Eterna-Matic, which also has a ball-bearing self-winding mechanism. From that moment the self-winding watch ceases to be the prerogative of men. Incontestably, Eterna has secured an honored place in modern watchmaking: it was one of the "Big Three" — one of the three brands producing the greatest number of chronometers, every one of them highly commended for "especially good results"

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