Glycine

Founded 1914 · Biel/Bienne, Switzerland · Eugène Meylan

Glycine was founded in 1914 in Biel/Bienne, when Eugène Meylan — then twenty-three — set up La Glycine to build small, refined movements, often cased in gold and platinum. The house changed hands early and only found its lasting identity four decades later, with a watch made at a pilot's request: the Airman of 1953, the first built to read several time zones at once.

History

Meylan founded the company in 1914 and ran it until 1922, when the factory passed to the watchmaker Georges Flury and to Fernand Engel, owner of the Pretto Watch Company, with the banker Charles Perret behind the deal. Meylan went his own way and set up Automatic E.M.S.A. — Eugène Meylan Société Anonyme — whose self-winding module, patented in 1931, turned a hand-wound watch into an automatic and was fitted into Glycine cases. The turning point came in 1953: at the request of the British pilot Chat Brown, the house introduced the Airman, with a twenty-four-hour dial to tell day from night in flight and follow more than one time zone at once. Commercial and military pilots took it up, among them United States Air Force crews in Vietnam, and the astronaut Pete Conrad wore his strapped to his space suit on Gemini 5 in 1965. In 1967 the house opened the Combat line, military and sporting in cut, still its other large family. In 2014 the DKSH group bought a majority of Glycine Watch S.A. to open Asian markets for it, and on 11 August 2016 sold it to the Invicta Watch Group, which said the brand would keep its independence and concentrate the catalogue on Airman and Combat.

Iconic models

Airman (1953)
The watch that defines the house. It was made at the request of the British pilot Chat Brown and was the first to offer several time zones at a glance; its twenty-four-hour dial tells day from night at once.
Airman on Gemini 5 (1965)
Pete Conrad wore his strapped to his space suit and came back with it intact. It was not issued kit: it was the watch the astronaut already wore.
Combat (1967)
The second family of the house, military and sporting in cut. It is the line most seen today, with the Combat Sub as its diver.
E.M.S.A. self-winding module (patented 1931)
Not a watch but the mechanism Meylan patented after leaving Glycine, which turned a hand-wound movement automatic. It was fitted into cases of the house he had founded.

Worth knowing

Who founded Glycine has two answers, and both are true at different moments: Eugène Meylan created it in 1914, and the trio of Perret, Flury and Engel took it over in 1922. The brand's own site tells the second version today and does not name Meylan, who ended up building, in his separate company, the self-winding module fitted to the watches of the house he had founded.