Beyond the Dot
In 1881, Achilles Ditesheim, a precocious 19-year-old entrepreneur, founded what would become Movado in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.
In 1905, Ditesheim renamed his young company Movado, a word meaning “always in motion” in the Esperanto, a new cosmopolitan language designed to unify the world.
Movado has a long history with innovative automatic movements, introducing our first, the Tempomatic, in 1945. At the 1969 Basel Fair, Movado and Zenith debuted the world’s first automatic chronograph movement, dubbed the El Primero, revolutionizing the industry.
Movado Museum Dial Facts:
The Museum Dial, perhaps Movado’s most iconic design, was designed by Nathan George Horwitt as an exploration of the concept of time and takes its inspiration from a sundial, with the signature dot representing the sun at high noon. The design was accepted into the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent design collection in 1960, solidifying its place in the cannon of modernism.