Cartier

Founded in Paris in 1847 and known first as a jeweller, Cartier came to watchmaking through design rather than through movement manufacture, buying calibres from Edmond Jaeger and later from the European Watch and Clock Company. Its contribution to the wristwatch is formal: the case shapes it drew in the first decade of the twentieth century established that a watch for the wrist could be conceived as an object in its own right rather than a pocket watch made small.