The story of DeWitt is above the story of one man, Jérôme de Witt, who dreamed of creating a watch manufacture for the twenty-first century. In 2002 he started bringing together, from scratch, a collective of watchmaking experts who shared his passion all under one roof. The aim was simple: the manufacture should be able to produce the entire finished timepiece.
In 2005, DeWitt presented its first creation: the Academia Differential Tourbillon, a spherical differential system for winding the watch, combined with a tourbillon. The same year, the timepiece won the first prize for innovation at the Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix – and thus the Academia collection was born.
The company’s patents have since included a new form of date for a lady’s watch, first presented in the Alma and a system for exerting constant force on the tourbillon cage.
In 2011, DeWitt unveiled the X-Watch, its third Concept Watch, featuring an X-shaped cover. When opened, this reveals a reversible movement with bi-retrograde hours and minutes displayed on each side of the dial, an automatic tourbillon, a chronograph and a patented Automatic Sequential Winding (ASW) mechanism. With a total of 544 components, the DW 8046 calibre is the perfect embodiment of DeWitt creativity.
In 2012 DeWitt unveiled its in-house, hand-wound skeleton tourbillon calibre DW8028, continuing the brand's application of traditional watchmaking technology in a contemporary construction. In keeping with Jérôme De Witt's philosophy, this new calibre does not seek to remove material and slim down at any cost but instead to exude the strength and robustness that is typical of all DeWitt timepieces.
Two years later, in 2014, DeWitt introduced a new self-winding tourbillon calibre, the Calibre DW8015, derived from the brand's DW8014 movement. This new calibre introduced the brand's patented Automatic Sequential Winding (ASW) technology, driven by a peripheral oscillating mass, eradicating the defects associated with slip springs and providing a constant flow of energy to the main gear train.
In 2015 the brand further intensified its vertical integration with the launch of its own in-house base calibre, the DW5051, and presented its fourth concept watch in the form of the Academia Mathematical, a watch without hands.
