Patek Philippe, a Geneva family company

In 1839 Antoine Norbert de Patek, a Polish émigré living in Geneva, and the watchmaker François Czapek founded Patek, Czapek & Cie to make fine pocket watches. A few years later the French watchmaker Jean Adrien Philippe won a bronze medal at the 1844 Industrial Exposition in Paris for a system that wound and set a watch through the crown instead of with a key. He patented it in 1845, and by 1851 the business was called Patek, Philippe & Cie.

In 1868 the company made the first Swiss wristwatch, for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary. During the Depression, in 1932, the brothers Jean and Charles Henri Stern, who supplied its dials, invested in the company. The same year saw the first Calatrava, Reference 96, and in 1933 Patek Philippe completed a supercomplication pocket watch for the American banker Henry Graves Jr.

The Stern family still owns and runs the company. In 1996 it moved production to a new manufacture in Plan-les-Ouates, on the edge of Geneva, and Thierry Stern, the fourth generation of the family to lead it, has been president since 2009. Patek Philippe remains independent and makes its watches in Geneva.