The World of Watches

  Figure 1 The company was founded in Le Locle, Switzerland, in 1882 by Ariste Calame, Figure 1. We know little about him, except that his Swiss family roots went back to the sixteenth century and he came from a long line of “mechanically minded” ancestors. He was born in 1839, and so started his company at a relatively later age (45) than did many of his contemporaries in the watch manufacturing world. He died in 1917 at age 78. For the first 24 years, the company was known simply as Ariste Calame. He used the name Zodiac on several of his models, but it was not until 1908 that Calame patented the brand name. Ariste retired from the company in 1890, but “unofficially” continued to run it until his son, Louis-Ariste Calame (1875-1955) took over in 1895. During the early years, Calame/Zodiac subsisted on manufacturing movements and movement parts for other companies, notably Favre-Perret and Seiko of Japan. Between 1908 and 1914 Zodiac manufactured its own calibers and movemen...