Heuer Watch Company was founded in 1860 by Edouard Heuer. He opened a watchmaking workshop in St-Imier, a village in the Swiss Jura region. Commencing in the mid-1960s, Heuer was part of a partnership (with Breitling and Hamilton) that sought to introduce the world's first automatic chronograph. Seiko (a Japanese watch manufacturer) and Zenith (a Swiss watch manufacturer) were also seeking to be the first to offer these chronographs. These projects were conducted in secret, as none of the competitors wanted the other companies to be aware of their efforts. Most agree that the Heuer-Breitling venture was first to introduce their new line of automatic chronographs to the world wide market, with Heuer-Breitling-Hamilton holding lavish press conferences in Geneva and New York, on 3 March 1969, to show their new lines of chronographs.


Edouard Heuer

The Heuer Monaco 40th Anniversary re-edition with Calibre 11 (2009) is a limited edition, contemporary replica of the original 1969 Heuer Monaco.
Heuer's first automatic chronographs were the Autavia, Carrera and Monaco. These were powered by the Cal 11 and Cal 12 movements (12-hour chronograph); Cal 14 movement (12-hour chronograph and additional hand for GMT / second time-zone) and the Cal 15 movement (30-minute chronograph). Unusually, the winding crown was on the left, with the pushers for the chronograph on the right. The earliest of Heuer's Cal 11 chronographs (from 1969) were named "Chrono-Matic". In the early 1970s, Heuer expanded its line of automatic chronographs to include the Daytona, Montreal, Silverstone, Calculator, Monza and Jarama models, all of them powered by the Caliber 11 movement.
Several of the automatic Heuer chronographs powered by the Caliber 11 series of movements are associated with automobile racing and specific drivers. Steve McQueen wore a blue Monaco in the 1971 movie, Le Mans (with this model now referred to as the "McQueen Monaco") and Swiss Formula One star Jo Siffert customarily wore a white-dialed Autavia with black registers. In 1974, Heuer produced a special version of the black-dialed Autavia that was offered by the Viceroy cigarette company, in a special promotion for $88. The Viceroy advertisements for this promotion featured racer Parnelli Jones, this version of the Autavia got to be called the "Viceroy".

The Carrera model was named after the legendary "Carrera Panamericana Mexico Road Race. The Carrera range has graced the wrists of many racing giants.
In 1887, Edouard Heuer made history with the oscillating pinion. In 2010, for the 150th anniversary of TAG Heuer, they gave it new life and re-engineerd it in-house
, to create the Calibre 1887 chronograph, which won the "La Petite Aiguille" 2010 Best Watch Of The Year Award at the Grand Prix de L'Horlogerie de Genève.
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