Cortébert

Abraham-Louis Juillard was making watches in Sonvilier in 1790, selling roughly thirty pieces a year to clients in Paris. Around 1830 his son Lucien took over and opened a comptoir in St-Imier, sourcing blanks from Fontainemelon and Beaucourt while home watchmakers handled sub-assembly. In 1850 Lucien passed the business to his son Albert Juillard-Morel. To solve the blank supply problem that constrained growth, Albert joined forces with nearby manufacturers including Chopard in Sonvilier, Jaquet in St-Imier and Blancpain in Villeret. Together they chose the village of Cortébert, where the Suze river could provide hydroelectric power, as the site for a shared ébauche factory. Raiguel, Juillard & Cie was inaugurated there in 1864 and eventually became the Fabrique d'ébauches de Cortébert. When that original agreement expired in 1887, Albert's sons Henri and Emile took control through Juillard frères, and in the same year the Cortébert trademark was registered. By 1901 the brand was renamed Cortébert Watch Co. The company had been making watches with jumping hours and minutes since 1884 under licence from IWC, which held the Pallweber patents, and also supplied the very first ébauches to Georges-Frédéric Roskopf for his low-cost proletarian watch. In the early 1920s Cortébert was producing over 200,000 watches annually and shipping them worldwide. Pocket watches were still the core product, and the company was known for thin, reliable calibers: some ran just 2.6 mm tall. Wristwatch production grew through the late 1920s and 1930s. In 1929 Cortébert introduced the bracelet-chevalet, a wristwatch whose case could hinge upright on a double back. A bag watch called the Rébus followed in 1931, competing with Movado's Ermeto. In 1932 the company launched a pocket chronograph. From 1934 the Cortébert Sport line brought water resistance and Incabloc shock protection. In 1928 Cortébert became the official supplier to the Italian Railways, delivering 3,000 watches that year and 5,000 the next. By 1960 annual deliveries to Italian Railways had reached 100,000 pieces. The company also submitted watches to chronometer trials at Neuchâtel, Kew Teddington and Geneva from the 1920s through the 1950s. It won Prix de série at Neuchâtel in 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954 and 1955, and received certification from the Geneva Observatory in 1952 and 1955. In 1944 the company hired engineer Hans Kocher, who later invented automatic micro-rotor calibers at Büren. That same year Cortébert used the firm's own resources to produce watches for Pope Pius XI during the 1950 Holy Year. In 1947 the Corté-date calendar watch appeared, adding day, date, month and moon phase. In 1954 the company launched its first in-house automatic movement, the caliber 700 Cortérotor, with bidirectional rotor winding and an optional date window. Despite these achievements, the company struggled after the deaths of senior family members in the mid-1950s and faced growing pressure from cheap Roskopf watches. In 1962 Cortébert sold its industrial facilities to SSIH (Omega, Tissot, Lemania), and the factory became an Omega annex. The brand moved to offices in Bienne under Charles and Albert Juillard. In 1966 the Ermano holding company acquired the brand. Charles and Albert stayed on briefly, and in 1968 Cortébert released a diving watch, followed in 1969 by an electronic balance-wheel watch. Both men left in 1970. Ermano used the Cortébert name for a few more years, mainly on pocket watches, then abandoned it. The Cortébert trademark was subsequently acquired by a new owner and is currently used by an active concern selling watches online under the Cortébert 1790 name. No manufacturing connection exists between the current entity and the original Swiss manufacturer.