I have seen many people asking, what strap would their watch originally have been sold on. The truth is: unless you can find the original advertisement or catalog entry for your watch, there’s no real way of knowing.
So, can you assume that a watch would’ve been fitted with a particular type of strap? Well, yes.
Ligne is one of those terms that you may have seen before but not knowing exactly what it means. I certainly had never heard of it before I became interested in watches and watchmaking.
When I did read about it, I didn’t know exactly what it was. I figured it was watchmaker’s jargon and mainly used to try and impress people. It turns out I was wrong.
It’s a term that comes from a rich history of Swiss and French watchmaking and it’s actually still useful today.
So, what is a ligne and why is it important?
This time a very obscure watch on the bench. I couldn’t find any info about Marchal La Haye.
All I know is that it’s a 1940s dress watch with an AS 984 movement, a lovely dial with a railroad minute track, luminous sword hands, and hooded lugs.
It did run but only intermittently, so it’s in need of a service.
Here we go.
In this new series, we take on various watch-related questions, which have been googled by a large number of people.
Regardless of whether the question is good, ordinary, or just plain silly, we’ll try to answer it, either by digging through whatever we can or by stating the obvious.
Either way, you’ll have the answer you were looking for.
In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer, along with five crew members set out on a journey from South America to Polynesia on a wooden raft. They set out to prove the possibility of contact between the civilizations of the two regions in ancient times.
The name of the raft was KonTiki.
Crew members of the KonTiki were supposedly equipped with Eterna watches. A reasonable choice, as for what it’s worth, Eterna was one of these few brands, that managed to get just about everything right, waterproof cases included.
Oddly enough, it’s not known if Heyerdahl himself was wearing an Eterna. The watch on museum display, labeled as the “expedition’s chronometer” (well, hardly a chronometer as such) is…a military issued Longines COSD “Tuna Can”. These were built by Longines for British paratroopers during World War II.
It’s unclear just what a British milwatch was doing on the wrist of a Norwegian explorer, however – in all likelihood – it could have been a military surplus purchase, as many milwatches were decommissioned and sold after the war.
Anyway, Longines didn’t make it into the history books as the brand of the watches worn by the KonTiki crew. Eterna, however, did.
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