‘Vulcain’: the watch of presidents

Origins in La Chaux-de-Fonds

The Vulcain story begins in 1858, when the brothers Maurice, Gaspard and Aron Ditisheim founded a small workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the cradle of Swiss watchmaking, initially devoted to making pocket watches.

In 1894, by then at the head of the firm, Maurice Ditisheim placed the business in the hands of one of his sons, and it was then that the company adopted the name by which it is known today: Vulcain. For decades the brand devoted itself to classic pocket watchmaking, until, well into the Second World War, it turned its production towards the wristwatch, laying the foundations for the milestone that would make it universally famous.

Key milestones in its history

• 1889 — First international recognition, with a bronze medal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris.
• 1947 — Launch of the Cricket caliber, the result of five years of research led by Robert Ditisheim alongside some of the country's finest watchmakers. It was the first mechanical wristwatch capable of producing a genuinely audible alarm, thanks to a twin-barrel system developed in collaboration with the French physicist Paul Langevin.
• 1953 — The White House News Photographers Association presents Harry S. Truman with a 14-carat gold Cricket engraved with the inscription ‘One More Please’, giving rise to the tradition that would make the model ‘the presidents' watch’.
• 1950s and 1960s — The Cricket was adopted by successive American presidents, among them Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson (who went so far as to have his own signature on the dial of his example), cementing the brand's bond with the White House.
• 1961 — Presentation of the Cricket Nautical, a 42 mm diving watch resistant to 300 metres and able to sound its alarm even underwater, taking the firm beyond the institutional sphere and into the world of maritime and alpine exploration.
• 2005 — Presentation of the Imperial Gong, a Grand Complication combining a chiming alarm with a flying tourbillon, marking the firm's greatest technical leap in its modern era.
• 2008 — Celebration of the manufacture's 150th anniversary with the launch of the Anniversary Heart model, featuring a semi-skeletonized dial.

The manufacture today

Based in Le Locle, Vulcain maintains a relatively small artisanal output, estimated at between 3,000 and 4,000 watches a year, and continues to build its identity around the Cricket caliber, whose twin-barrel architecture (one for the running of the watch and another exclusively for the alarm) remains, more than seventy-five years on, the technical heart of the brand. Current models, such as the Cricket President or the 50’s Presidents’ Watch, Nautical and Aviator collections, sit alongside haute horlogerie pieces such as the Vulcanograph, reinterpreting the house's chronograph heritage.