Wyler (company)

Wyler or Wyler Genève is an Italian Binda Group's watch manufacturer: the original Swiss company was acquired by Italian corporation. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

History

Paul Wyler was born in 1896. Wyler presented its first 16 and 19-line precision movements to the public in 1923. The particularity of these was the Incaflex balance wheel, which was legendary at the time. The Wyler Incaflex balance wheel is protected along its diameter by two curved, elastic arms, which absorb any shocks to the balance wheel. In addition to producing his own calibres, Wyler also modified movements of other large-scale producers and sold these on to other watch companies. In some cases, the basic calibre was changed so much that the movements should actually be considered as Wyler calibres.

In 1934, Wyler was the official watch of Italy's World Cup winning team.

In 1937 the company caused a stir by launching a water-resistant watch that was not fitted with the conventional soft gaskets. The mineral glass was pressed in between the edge of the case and a pressed or screwed bezel, the gap between the winding shaft and the watch case was sealed hydraulically by fitting the winding shaft and bushing together, in the same material, to 1/500mm.

Wyler gained worldwide notoriety with a spectacular marketing stunt in 1956, when two watches were dropped from the top of the Eiffel Tower and continued to function after the fall.

In 1960 manual and self-winding models from the Incaflex range became the official railway watch of the Santa Fe Railroad. In 1972, the Wyler Watch Corp. New York became a distributor for Eterna.

The rebirth of the brand

The brand was reborn as Wyler Genève at Baselworld 2006, following a decision by the Binda Group to reposition it.

At Baselworld 2007, the Wyler Genève Chronograph and tourbillons were presented, and in autumn 2007 the Wyler-Zagato watch was launched in conjunction with the Italian Atelier Zagato. The watch has an 8-day manual-winding manufacture movement.

This article uses content from the article Wyler/en at Watch-Wiki, which is published under the GNU Free Documentation Licence. In Watch-Wiki there is a list of authors available.