1997
Audemars Piguet Jules Audemars Chronograph
East and West Germany reunited1997 Audemars Piguet Jules Audemars Chronograph ref. 25859ST, 39mm. steel case. The black dial features applied Arabic numerals, white gold hour markers and baton style hands. The chronograph hands are white to contrast with the black dial for legibility.
The Jules Audemars chronograph is sadly a discontinued model, this attractive two-register chronograph was a mainstay in the Audemars Piguet line up. Of course, Audemars Piguet is know best known for the Royal Oak watches, but this watch was easily the most popular offering from AP outside of the Royal Oak models.
Movement is the automatic winding, in house Audemars Piguet Caliber 2226 with 51 jewels, beating at 28,800 vibrations per hour, with a 40 hour power reserve.
At the very beginning of the seventies, Audemars Piguet, just like many other Swiss watch manufacturers, was facing troubled financial conditions because of the Japanese watches, the quartz crisis .
In 1971 Audemars Piguet realized that, without a disruptive change, a financial collapse was inevitable. The company decided it was time to introduce something totally new, a sporty yet elegant high end timepiece as never seen before.
The designer of choice for this task was a designer born in Geneva in 1931, Gerald Genta. Not a new designer, rather one of the most famous watch designer at that time, having created successful watches for Universal Geneve Polerouter Microtors, White Shadow, Golden Shadow, Omega Constellation and Patek Philippe Golden Ellipse.