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Joël Pynson
June 2025
Compagnie des Montres Astin was founded in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1926 by Gaston Cattin [1].
It was a period of crisis for the Swiss watchmaking industry, and not a propitious time for business creation: by 1927 the company was in difficulty.
In 1936, the company was taken over by André Bozonnat [2], and shifted its focus to the production of chronographs, increasingly in demand by the public.
1938
1939
The company grew rapidly and numerous models were launched: automatic watches and calendar watches from 1940, water-resistant watches around 1941, etc.
1941
1941
1941
In 1944, Compagnie des Montres Astin was taken over by the Schwarz family, who already owned several watchmaking factories, including Sultana, Nouvelles Fabriques Le Phare, and Les fils de Schwarz-Etienne, montres Alpha [3].
Astin lost its specialization in chronographs and became a generalist watchmaker.
1951
1957
In 1966, Compagnie des Montres Astin ceased to exist, and was replaced by Astin SA, now a real estate company [4].
[1] FOSC 1926
[2] FOSC 1936
[3] FOSC 1944
[4] FOSC 1966
The FOSC (Feuille Officielle Suisse du Commerce) is available on E-periodica
Notes :
About Time To Tell: Time To Tell has one of the largest private digitized databases on the history of Swiss watchmaking, with over 2.3 TB of data on more than 1,000 Swiss watch manufacturers. This database has been built up over a period of some thirty years, and continues to be fed with around 50 to 100 GB of data every year. The database is made up of old documents, mainly Swiss trade journals, dating from the late 19th to the late 20th century. Most of these documents are not available on the Internet. Historical articles published on the time2tell.com website always cite the sources used.
Time To Tell is a private company, independent of any watch manufacturer.
©Time To Tell, 2025
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