History of a passion
Since its founding by Eugène Meylan in 1914, Glycine has been producing watches at its factory in Bienne, Switzerland. Meylan was an uncompromising watch engineer who strove for perfection and nothing less. He had a profound understanding of both the market demands and the possibilities offered by the technological advances of the time. Very soon, he succeeded in producing extremely precise, small movements for ladies watches, enabling Glycine to put on the market the finest miniature movements, clad in precious gold and platinum cases, often studded with diamonds. Glycine became a supplier to the wealthy people who valued highly these works of fine craftsmanship. However, Meylan did not stop there. Around 1931, he presented to the world market a well-functioning self-winding watch, entirely of his own invention, a sensational performance that, for lack of capital, could not be exploited commercially. Some of these GLYCINE Eugène Meylan SA self-winding watches can still be found in the collectors' market.
The year 1934 saw the launch of a chronometer range, a line of watches passing the exacting tests of the Official Swiss Quality Control. The depression years of the 30s and the approaching world war took a heavy toll on the company as Switzerland was cut off from nearly all its traditional export markets. Yet Glycine survived and even managed to be one of only 29 exhibitors at the Basel Fair in 1938, an annual event the firm has not missed since.
Today Glycine is mainly associated with two groups of watches. The one consists of mainly oversized functional watches which are easy to read and fashionable. Many of these models use pocket watch movements with manual winding. The other is the Airman range. The Airman models are multiple time zone watches for which Glycine has been famous since the 1950s. Most models are available with see through backs. The AIRMAN 7 (3829.19-LB9) is a very unusual watch in that it has three completely separate movements in one case giving four time zones. The case is necessarily large at 53mm. There is now a square version of this watch. In recent years Glycine has introduced many extra models - too many to cover on our site- including some limited editions. Several new models were introduced recently, including AIRMAN 17 and AIRMAN 18 as well as some new INCURSORE models.
