Vintage Gruen watches were built on the “Center-Pinions For Watch” patent, which he submitted in 1874. A few years later, in 1876, Detrich established the Columbus Watch Manufacturing Company. They were making ten watches every day by 1879. Gruen’s success in 1882 attracted new investors, and the company was reorganized to become the Columbus Watch Company.Up until the “Panic of 1893,” or depression in modern parlance, things were well for Gruan and his colleagues. The Gruens left the company in 1894, and it finally failed in 1903 as a result of the slump and intense competition from Walther and Elgin. Fred Gruen is known to have left Columbus about the time of watch serial number 229,000, and the watches in Columbus before him did not have names.
In 1894, Ditrich Gruen and his son Fredrick Gruen founded D. Gruen and Son, a company that made premium timepieces. They established the Time Hill watch manufacturing in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1911, and it grew until 1953. This year reached its peak because it was the highest sales year ever for Gruen. The president was removed from office due to a controversy the same year the Gruen family sold their stake. By 1958, the business, now known as Gruen Industries, had lost its focus, had serious legal problems, and racked up enormous debts. It started selling off its properties, including the famous Time Hill, and laid off workers as retaliation. Finally declaring bankruptcy in 1976, M.Z. Berger purchased the Gruen brand. This effectively brought an end to the initial phase of Gruen vintage watches, despite the fact that the brand is still manufactured today.
During their rule, Gruen watches were among the most expensive and well-known timepieces. In 1929, the UltraThin line with a platinum and diamond case cost $1250, or more than $30,000 in modern currency. When compared to the cheap timepieces of the day, which sold for only $1, even the SemiThin line’s bottom end watches went for $25. Other important watch models include the Quadron (1925), the Techni-Quadron (1925), the Pentagon (1922), the Cartouche (1921), and the VeriThin (1904). (1928).
In 1904, the VeriThin collection of Gruen antique watches was released. Gruen already produced smaller-sized watches and has now chosen to expand into the production of thin watches. This was accomplished by the VeriThin by cutting the normal movement’s four layers of overlapping elements to just three layers. Although they weren’t the first to use this technique to create slimmer timepieces, they were the first to do it successfully from a commercial standpoint. These timepieces were only approximately 2/3 as thick as a watch of a same size at 7mm.
By removing a further layer from the VeriThin movement, the UlltraThin series of watches advanced the technology. This results in just two operational layers.
The Cartouche was a rectangular wristwatch with rounded corners, as its name kind of implies. It was created as a sophisticated women’s watch and released in 1921. The first Gruen movement made exclusively for wrist watches was utilized in the Cartouche. In the line, there are more than 500 different Cartouche models.
