165 Years – Homage to F. A. Lange Collection/en

165 Years – Homage to F. A. Lange Collection
Three exceptional timepieces demonstrate the capabilities of A. Lange & Söhne

Glashütte, January 2010

With a special collection of exceptional complications, A. Lange & Söhne commemorates the spiritual legacy of the founder of Germany’s precision watchmaking industry. Presented in a novel gold alloy of hitherto unmatched hardness, the trilogy consisting of the TOURBOGRAPH “Pour le Mérite”, the LANGE 1 TOURBILLON, and the 1815 MOONPHASE manifests the horological heritage of Ferdinand Adolph Lange enriched with contemporary ingenuity and artisanal virtuosity.

It was in 1845 when Ferdinand Adolph Lange moved from the splendour of palatial Dresden to the remote and impoverished mining town of Glashütte to make his dream of the ideal watch manufactory come true. He did it with the intention of crafting the world’s finest timepieces. Aware of the fact that today’s innovation is tomorrow’s standard, he evolved to become a staunch reformist to whom precision watchmaking owes numerous inventions and enhancements. For instance, he was among the first members of his guild to adopt metric units of measurement and abandon the then prevalent but complicated Parisian ligne system. His work was characterised by the quest for supreme precision. The drafts for mechanisms of his own design, even the most complicated ones, were exemplary as regards clarity of engineering and layout. His values remain the benchmark that inspires the work of all Lange employees.