Panerai Watch History

Panerai, one top brand of Italy watches. As we know, and design for well over one hundred years among collectors and other cognoscenti, as we know over the last several years, Panerai watches have earned a worldwide reputation for excellence in design and performance.Let’s look back of Panerai’s development of history.

In 1860, Giovanni Panerai opened his watch-making shop in Florence, Italy. Florence’s first watchmaker, G. Panerai & Co., quickly established a reputation for making exquisitely crafted watches.After Giovanni died, his son Leon Francesco Panerai took over his father’s workshop and continued to build upon the Panerai reputation for excellence. No soon a new venture named Guido Panerai and Figliothe when Leon’s son Guido also joined the business, and that time the business focused on designing and manufacturing high-precision mechanical instruments for many different clients, eventually, Royal Italian Navy also joined the business and then the company was renamed Officine Panerai again.

In the early 1930s, Guido’s children, Giuseppe and Maria, continued their father’s work with Maria focusing on the watch-making part of the business and Giuseppe working mainly on expanding the company’s long relationship with the Italian Navy. He continued to develop and manufacture luminous devices for divers, including wrist compasses, depth gauges, and a wide range of other fine mechanical equipment designed for underwater performance.

In 1936, the navy asked Giuseppe to design and build an underwater watch that could withstand extreme conditions. The first Panerai Radiomir watch prototype passed all testing protocols.

In 1938-1993, Panerai launched just 300 timepieces, it started selling its oversized timepieces produced in limited numbers for the general public in Italy. The company experienced World War II in this period.the navy needed all the equipment that the Panerais could make, especially diver’s watches. In 1943, the first Panerai Mare Nostrum chronograph was introduced for naval officers, although the watch never went into production.

In 1949, a patent was issued for the Panerai Luminor. This model effectively replaced the Radiomir. Work continued, with craftsmen focused on creating Panerai watch models able to perform at greater and greater depths. Until the end of the 1980s, new Panerai watches were made exclusively for military clients; however, the company made their watches available to the public in the early 1990s.The big break for the company came when Franco Cologni, an executive with the Vendome Group, presently known as the Richemont group, was really impressed by Panerai watches. His deep interest in the brand and its products led to the acquisition of Panerai by the Richemont group in 1997.

Since 1997 the brand has been ruled by Angelo Bonati. Panerai CEO faced the major decision whether to continue assembling timepieces from ETA movements and further increase the production or take the challenge and develop Panerai in-house caliber while remaining a limited-production brand. Finally, Mr. Bonati chose the second alternative. He wanted Panerai timepieces to be equipped with elaborated movements with very specific characteristics, which would be easily recognized as a signature caliber for Panerai. As the result in March, 2005 there appeared a large hand-wound 8-day movement, the P.2002, which took two years to be developed. The first timepiece to feature the innovative movement became the Radiomir 8 days GMT limited to only 50 pieces.Panerai replica watches reflect all the long way the brand has passed to the firm position it presently occupies in the world of watch-making.

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