Chuck Maddox’s Watch Blog

This page is a journal of my journey in the field of Horology, which is timekeeping. In other words, watch collecting. Which in my case is the collecting of chronograph watches. To contact me, email me at: cmaddox3@sbcglobal.net .

Name:
Location: Chicagoland, United States

The Extremely wordy version of my Resumé is located here: http://home.xnet.com/~cmaddox/resume.html

Friday, December 17, 2004

Links to more Gallet info as requested by Chris M.

Chris Meisenzahl asks relating to my posting of my latest Gallet acquisition:

“Do you have any more info on the history of the brand and/or movement? I'm interested in learning more.”

Here are some links to Gallet's site... It's a very interesting tale.

The first Gallet to become a citizen of Geneva, was Humbertus Gallet, from Bourg-en-Bresse, France. He has been registered in the register of citizens as a citizen of the city Geneva on April 16, 1466, Involved in the watch business since the 1700's, Importing watches into Chicago as early as 1864 (The firm that would be come Omega in 1894 was founded in 1848, Heuer in 1860 by comparision), Supplied watches to the British Army in World War I, and developed the "Flying Officer model for the U.S. Airforce prior to World War II. The company declined with the onslaught of the Quartz and Japanese "invasion"s of the 1970's and 1980's and I personally had thought that the firm had been long out of business when their current website (under new management after the brand name was sold in 1996) miraculously appeared a couple of years ago. I was very moved to hear that Gallet was back, for I had resigned myself to their extinction previously.

Today, Bernard Gallet the great grandson of the family patriarch Léon Gallet is one of two people (I'm aware of) that remain involved with the current firm that bears the family name of their ancestors... Jack Heuer, the father of the Heuer Carrera is the only other person I'm aware of, both are employed as advisors to the firm that bears their family name.

Gallet's Current Collection appears to be built around ETA and Valjoux base movements for the most part. Gallet's Historical Models were based around a variety of movements including Venus, Landeron, Valjoux and their own Excelsior Park movements.

-- Chuck


1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Chuck, thanks very much!!


That's great info, I wasn't even aware that Gallet was a current brand.

Have a great day,

Chris


p.s. A local friend had a kidney stone attack 3 days ago. It's his first and they told him it was 6mm in diameter! Reminds of the Seinfeld episode. :-)

Friday, December 17, 2004 10:16:00 AM  

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