The first reversible wristwatch (1931)

A steel Reverso made in about 1931, reference 201, with the Tavannes calibre 064 of the first year and an engraved back, sold with its archive extract at Antiquorum, Geneva, in 2012.Photograph: Antiquorum · used with credit · Antiquorum

The need: British officers playing polo in India kept smashing their watch glasses. In the winter of 1930–31 one of them challenged the Swiss businessman César de Trey to make a watch that could survive a match.
Made by: The case was invented by the French engineer René-Alfred Chauvot, who filed the patent in Paris on 4 March 1931 and sold it to de Trey that July. LeCoultre & Cie of Le Sentier supplied the movements; the cases were made by Wenger. The name Jaeger-LeCoultre came only in 1937.
What was new: A rectangular case that slides along rails in its carrier and turns right over, so a solid steel back faces outward while the dial is safe underneath. The first pieces used Tavannes movements; LeCoultre’s own calibre 410 arrived in 1933.
Worth knowing: The flat steel back became a canvas for engraving and enamel, which is why so many early Reversos carry monograms, crests and portraits. The design has never gone out of production.
Where it is now: Early examples are in Jaeger-LeCoultre’s heritage collection at Le Sentier and come up regularly at auction.

Historian’s noteThe Universal Genève Cabriolet is sometimes dated 1929 and offered as an earlier reversible watch; Universal’s own history dates it to 1933, after the Reverso patent.

SourcesFrench patent FR712868 · Jaeger-LeCoultre