Heuer

David Abercrombie Founded his Eponymous brand in 1892 before joining forces with financier Ezra Fitch in 1900 to create the brand we know today, Abercrombie & Fitch. The self-styled, “Greatest Sporting Goods Store in the World” was originally located on Broadway in New York and offered the highest quality sporting equipment for those interested in outdoor pursuits such as hunting, fishing, climbing, driving, flying and sailing. Their client list, a Who’s Who of the era’s great and good included, amongst others, Howard Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, the Duke of Windsor, Amelia Earhart and Presidents Roosevelt, Hoover and Einsenhower. Their 1950’s flagship store on Madison and 45th contained a shooting range, a roof top pool large enough for fly and bait casting lessons, a resident golf pro, gunsmiths and full time watchmakers. 

The Abercrombie/Heuer relationship started in the mid 1940’s, with Abercrombie commissioning sporting style watches, primarily 3 register Chronograph’s such as the Ref 346 based on Heuer’s existing range of high end and robust models.

Subsequently, Abercrombie requested Heuer produce a watch specifically for their fishing and hunting clientele based on the 1930’s ‘Solunar Theory’ that suggests the best time of the day or month for fishing and hunting can be dictated by the position of the sun and moon. Despite the challenges, and with the assistance of a school age Jack Heuer and his high school physics teacher, Heuer produced the colorful ‘Solunar’ model with tide indicator. Whilst the Solunar represented a commercial failure for Heuer and Abercrombie, they were undeterred, deciding that the addition of a chronograph function could broaden the appeal of the model. To do this, they had to modify a manually wound Valjoux 71 movement to incorporate the high/low tide indicator with the chronograph, re design the dial, and replace the running seconds at 9 with the tide indicator.

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank OnTheDash and Heuer Vintage for their contributions to this note.