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Auguste
Agassiz, a young merchant,
moved to St Imier in Switzerland, in 1832. He operated what today
would have been known as a virtual corporation using home-workers to
create watches that he sold.
In 1854 he
handed responsibility of the business to his nephew, Ernest
Francillon.
He realized that
outsourcing did not produce consistency of quality. He built a
factory in Les Longines. It started producing chronographs in 1879.
In 1912 the company produced the first automatic timekeeping device
- the wire cutting system. From that day Longines has long been
associated with time-keeping at major sporting events.
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