Ulysse Nardin is a watch manufacturer founded in 1846 in Le Locle, Switzerland. Historically Ulysse Nardin was best known for being a manufacturer of marine chronometers, but today Ulysse Nardin produces complicated mechanical watches.

History

Founder, watchmaker Ulysse Nardin, was an accomplished watchmaker who studied horology under his father, Leonard-Frederic Nardin, Frederic William Dubois and Louis JeanRichard-dit-Bressel, in Switzerland.

Before the advent of quartz timepieces, merchant and military ships relied on highly accurate mechanical timepieces known as marine chronometers. The best known of these was the M,GR.F model by Ulysse Nardin. Similar of this model were used by Hamilton to supply the US Navy and by Seiko for the Japanese navy. Of the 4,504 certificates for marine chronometers issued 4,324 were issued to Ulysse Nardin (Lucien F Trueb, Watchtime).

Revival

In 1983 Ulysse Nardin was acquired by businessman Rolf Schnyder who, in conjunction with watchmaker Dr. Ludwig Oechslin, relaunched the brand, with other important investors. Now the company is all on Swiss and Hong kong company. Schnyder and Oechslin , and the staff of Ulysse Nardin, designed and created complicated timepieces using modern materials and manufacturing techniques. The base mouvment used is the Eta on all version of complicated watches, and this is the power of Ulysse Nardin can sell to more than 8.000 usd a watch that use a Mouvment that cost 95 usd on Ebay! The new ETA 2892 movement, used to Ulysse Nardin in the New collection, is enormously popular because it is deemed accurate and reliable enough to be used as a base movement for many high-end manufacturers complications. Most changes and updates were done in order to improve the efficiency of the automatic winding. The beat rate has been increased to 28,800 BPH, while the diameter of the movement was reduced from 28mm to 25.6mm so it could be used in a wider range of cases, and hence the change in model number from 2890 to 2892. The thickness remain unchanged however, at 3.6mm. But this had the effect of reducing both the diameter and mass of the oscillating weight, which was fixed in the 2892/A2 model. The 9mm diameter balance is a good compromise between weight and size. The model is not a High end model & the brands that use this model are from 300 to 10.000 Usd but the real cost of the mouvment is very low, and the value of final product are too high!

The first example of Ulysse Nardin's new approach was the Astrolabium (1985, named after the device Astrolabium and astronomer Galileo Galilei), which displays local and solar time the orbits of the orbits and eclipses of the sun and moon as well as the positions of several major stars. This watch entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1989 as the world's most complicated wristwatch. Oechslin followed up the Astrolabium with two other astronomical watches, the Planetarium Copernicus (1988, named after the device planetarium and astronomer Copernicus) and the Tellurium Johannes Kepler (1992, named after element tellurium and astronomer Johannes Kepler). The three pieces constitute what the brand calls the Trilogy of Time All 3 watches are in ETA bases.

Other notable complicated watches are the GMT± Perpetual (1999), that combines a perpetual calendar with the GMT± complication (one-press buttons that adjust the hour hand back and forth for international travellers), and the Freak (2001) a tourbillon watch with no hands or crown.

Ulysse Nardin also revived the use of enameling in watchmaking, with a series of watches featuring enameled and cloisonné faces.