Aeby & Landry/en

Aeby & Landry

The company Aeby & Landry was founded by John Aeby and Constant Felicien Landry in Madretsch in 1873. The factory had since 1878 a particularly good reputation. They produced in addition to standard pocket watches, chronographs and watches with music box and alarm function. The workshop was very modern for its time and was already equipped with gas engines to drive the machines.

In 1880, after the death of John Aeby, his sons Alfred (1850-1911) and Léo (1860-1893) continued the watch factory. In 1882 the factory already employed 300 workers.

Léo Aeby, the younger son of John Aeby, returned to Switzerland in 1884 after a 3-year study trip in the US. He used his experience and knowledge to modernize the watch industry in his home country to the American model. Initially people were very sceptical concerning the new production methods from America, but Léo Aeby was finally able to convince even the most sceptical through the quality of his watches.

Customers of the Aeby & Landry products, among others included the firm Gruen for whom Aeby worked for quite some time. The archives of Gruen show that early movements of the brand "Columbus" were supplied by Aeby between 1875-1880.

From 1884, Aeby & Landry also introduced pocket watches with digital display into the market. They were an in-house development based on a patent (patent 18 May 1883) of Josef Pallweber. These watches would, however, as the jump number pocket watches of the other producers, not be popular for a very long time.