Albert Einstein and Longines were honorary guests at Antiquorum when the famous New York auction house sold a Longines watch that had belonged to the famous physicist Albert Einstein.

The timepiece – an elegant gold model dating from 1929 – fetched for a total of USD 596,000, thus becoming the Longines watch that has fetched the highest price ever at auction. It seems that Albert Einstein incidentally owned a second watch made by the same manufacturer: a Longines pocket-watch dating from 1943 which is now in the History Museum in Berne (Switzerland).

Einstein’s watch symbolizes the fact that his Theory of relativity revolutionized our understanding of the nature of time. For Einstein, time is not an absolute dimension since it behaves relative to the speed of light, slowing perceptibly the closer we come to the speed of light. But in his day-to-day life, Einstein must have appreciated the dependable beat of his Longines.

L'orologio da polso di Einstein, un modello con cassa tonneau in oro prodotto nel 1929

L'orologio da tasca di Einstein, prodotto a Sant Imier nel 1943 e venduto nel 1946 ai gioiellieri Stahel di Zurigo