When you try to think of the what a typical watch looks like, often times you land on the Rolex Submariner or the Omega Speedmaster. But, once you start to think of a wider group of watch companies, the Lange 1 will most definitely come to mind.

The Lange 1 is manufactured by Germany watch company A. Lange & Söhne who are based in Glashütte. It was first produced in 1994 and incorporates the vision of their founder with true German watchmaking. But Lange has a much longer story that just the Lange 1. A. Lange & Söhne was founded in 1845 by Ferdinand A Lange. Up until World War 2, the brand was prosperous and created some incredible pieces that are a part of the history of horology. Because of the impact of the World War, the brand was lost during the soviet occupation of East Germany. After the War ended, Ferdinand Lange’s great-grandson, Walter Lange, relaunched the brand in 1990.

With the watch world in front of him, he decided to launch four new watches - one of them being the Lange 1. Walter Lange took inspiration for the watch from the five-minute clock of the Semper Opera house in Dresden that dates to 1841. This clock was where Walter found how he wanted to create his unique date function that is now patented. Looking deeper into the design of the watch, there is a hour and minute indicator located asymmetrically on the left side of the dial. There is also a sub seconds indicator located at 5 o’clock.

The first Lange 1 that launched at the A. Lange & Söhne relaunch event in 1994 was the yellow gold reference 101.001. It features a champagne dial and a solid case-back which has since then changed to a display case-back. It was running of the Lange L901.0 which has the typical three quarter plate.

Then in 1997, Lange discontinued the solid case-back for the Lange 1 and added white gold and pink gold versions of the watch. The white gold version, reference 101.027, featured a blue dial and the pink gold version, reference 101.031, featured a black dial.

Following these major changes, Lange released the reference 101.032 which was a variation of the 101.031. Instead of a black dial the 032 has a silver dial. After this release, Lange iterated on the Lange 1 design by adding complications to their watches. For example, in 2000 they added a Tourbillon and in 2002 they added a moonphase.

The last two major design changes Lange made were in 2003 where they increased the size of the Lange 1 to 42mm. Also, in 2012 they redesigned the movement used to be thinner which resulted in the caliber L905.1. After this there have been some further iterations but the base design of the Lange 1 is basically unchanged.

Lange was able to create a watch that has been unchanged since its inception and is still so desired by collectors. It is a perfect display of the care and craftsmanship Lange puts into every one of their watches.

Enjoy!