The Ambassador of Blancpain
Alexandra Kosteniuk showed us how it is done. She turned up a year ago as the
"Ambassadrice of Balmain", a Swiss watch company that signed a sponsoring
agreement with women's world vice-champion.
Now Vladimir Kramnik, too, is promoting a Swiss watch company, Blancpain, founded
in 1735 and today a manufacturer of high-quality (and high-price) mechanical
watches.
The Blancpain "ambassadors" are personalities who are regarded as
references in their own field and have left their mark on history. "All
share the same continuing passion for craftsmanship, precision and perfection."
Here's a list of the current dignitaries: Azzedine Alaia, Francis Ford Coppola,
Guy Savoy, Nicolas G. Hayek, Patrick Rambaud, Philippe Rochat, Vladimir Kramnik.
A short history of time
20,000 years ago ice-age hunters in Europe scratched lines and gouged holes
in sticks and bones, possibly counting the days between phases of the moon.
The four millennia before our time saw the Egyptians using the moving shadows
of obelisks as a kind of a sundial, and later water clocks (like the one found
in the tomb of pharaoh Amenhotep I, buried around 1500 BCE). In the late 9th
century the first candle clocks appeared, in the first half of the 14th century
large weight-driven mechanical clocks began to appear in the towers of several
large Italian cities.
Spring-driven clocks probably appeared first in Europe during the early 15th
century. In 1656 Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch scientist, made the first pendulum
clock. In 1735 Jehan-Jacques Blancpain established the first watch manufacture
as a cottage industry. In 1983 Jean-Claude Biver and Jacques Piguet combined
forces to revive the Blancpain Company. Close scrutiny of all available records
confirmed that there never had been such a thing as a Blancpain quartz watch.
And none will exist in the future.
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