History of Cyma Watches

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Cyma was founded 1891 in Tavannes by Tavannes Watch and F. Henri Sandoz. Frederic Henri Sandoz basically a businessman versus just an artisan. To move forward in his profession, he left home town of Le Locle and the Sandoz & Co. he had founded there. In the nearby town of Tavannes he established a new venture which was to produce simple and complicated watches such as chronographs. In 1890 he registered a patent for a chronograph. He developed further patents among them a stem-winding mechanism and a chime movement. The new workshops grew to over 1000 square meters and forty employees. Cyma had 40 staff and 55 modern machines that produced 40 watches a day,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], though at first only some of these had the Cyma name on them. Some of productions went onto the market under the Cyma name. About 1892 Cyma went into a cooperative agreement with Schwob Freres of La Chaux-de-Fonds. Cyma company continues to expand its operations after the turn of the century.
By around 1905, daily production amounted to some 1000 watches. New markets in the Far East and elsewhere gave a noticeable boost to growth. In 1938,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], around 2000 employees and 2200 machine-tools reached an output of about 4000 watches and movements a day The company's 20th-century product range naturally included wristwatches of the most diverse character-for example the shock-proof models with a protective cover issued to soldiers in 1915. These were followed by "waterproof" versions. Catalogs from the 1930s also show wrist-chronographs equipped with Valjoux movements. At that time, Tavannes-Cyma claimed to be Switzerland's largest supplier of precision watches.
The first automatic movement occurred in 1943 with the introduction of the caliber 420,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], which had a swing arm that only wound in one direction. This movement was fitted into the square-cased "Watersport" model, for instance. And the "Autorotor" caliber 485, an automatic watch first launched in 1957, is also a collectible item. Cyma used ETA calibers movements afterwards.
This name continued until 1966 when Tavannes-Cyma ceased production and the rights to the Cyma name went to the company 'Chronos Holding'.