In recent years, many brands, for example
Maurice Lacroix, reuse those famous ancient movements among Venus Cal.175 is the most famous one. Watches with Venus
Cal.175 impress me greatly each time I see them. In 2007, CYMA, getting inspiration from Venus Cal. 175, began to design a manual wound chronograph Cal. ML106-2.
CYMA was established by Joseph Schwob and Theodre Schwob in 1862. But, to be exactly speaking, it was not until 1891 that CYMA was pushed into the market. In 1891, the watch wholesale company Henri Sandoz & Cie set by Frederic Benri Sandoz merged with Tavannes established by Schwob brothers. Therefore, CYMA was formally branded on al movements and dials after 1891. You know that CYMA means highest in French!
At the beginning, CYMA , except daily-use simple watch models, also produced minute repeater and super complex watches. CYMA gained its first patented design and formally began to grow up in
business running. At the very beginning, there were only 40 employees in factory. Each watch technician should complete more than 40 movements every working day.
At that time La Chaux-De-Fonds was an important watch town where all Switzerland watch-making companies united and allied with each other. Tavannes –CYMA, CYMA, and
Tavennes were the same company brand names. CYMA’s business volume quickly expanded, especially in Asia. In Europe, England was also an importan area.
CYMA could produced 1000 movements every days in 1905. By 1938, the movement output reached 4000 pieces one day. Except
chronograph movement,CYMA already could self-produced other parts including case. It, most of time, adopted valjoux products among chronograph providers. In 1943, CYMA launched the semi-automatic movement Cal.420 equipped in square-shape Watersport Series which was one of hottest items sought after by collectors. In 1957, it developed bi-directional automatic movement
Cal.485 which was provided to Longines for use at the same time.
All watch lovers that 1960s was the golden era of
mechanical watches when watch factories began cruel competition. To reduce cost, big factories no longer produced movements or spare parts themselves. Basic movement providers began to provide basic movements to each factory, such as ETA AND AS. Therefore, 1966 became the most difficult year of CYMA. Its finance once face financial crisis resulting from operation cost problem. Thanks to Chronos Holding joined to CYMA, the said financial and operation problem had improved.
Here introduced Tavannes-a brand belong to CYMA. Please notice that it uses Cal.175 made by VENUS. At that time, many factories adopted Valjoux movements, so did CYMA. As known to all, VENUS Cal. 175 was often used by
Breitling but rare used by CYMA. From the movement polishing, we can find that the bottom plate features dot polishing and the upper splint has Geneva inclined waves and radiusing finishing on the plate. On a whole, it does not receive normal brushed and polished treatment on chronograph but has goose neck fine turning mechanism and high-standard brushing and polishing that used on luxury watches. As far as I know, even Breitling did not apply such high-standard working procedures on the used VENUS Cal. 175. Though there was only few collective works by CYMA and VENUS, I sure it really deserve your keeping.
