The article was originally produced on February 12, 2021, some facts and prices may have changed since then.
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This is the unique story about the Swedish high end and luxury watch brand Halda.
The Halda Watch Company dates back nearly 130 years, when the Henning Hammarlund founded his company in Svängsta as the first watch factory in northern Europe. Henning who was considered a mechanical genius, had attended the Geneva Academy of Horology in Switzerland, which is the most prominent watch making school in the world. In other words, he knew a thing or two about watches.
Porsche, Lamborghini and Bugatti
The price of a Halda Pocket watch was around seven monthly salaries. However, during the First World War, demand for pocket watches decreased so much that the factory had to stop producing watches. Nevertheless, this did not stop Halda from pursuing fine mechanical advances in other fields.
Halda ramified with several companies and products, including the fishing reel manufacturer ABU Garcia, and the Speed Pilot which was one of the first professional instruments for motorsport. The company behind Speed Pilot is currently called Haldex and has grown fairly big in the world of motorsport, supplying gearboxes and four-wheel drive to many of the luxury car manufacturers such as Porsche, Lamborghini and Bugatti.
Red Dot Design Award
In 2006, Swedish engineer and entrepreneur Mikael Sandström decided to revive the Halda Watch Company. Mr. Sandström had been working with watch development for over two decades and shared the vision of Henning Hammarlund in refusing to compromise on quality and innovation. The brand was relaunched with the unveiling of a new watch intended for space travel: the Halda Space Discovery. The watch was developed in collaboration with Nasa/ESA astronaut Christer Fuglesang, who also tested it during his second mission into space in 2009.
Upon today, Halda Space Discovery is used as an instrument by most of the European astronauts on their missions at the ISS space station and the watch has been awarded with the Red Dot Design Award. Halda exclusively produces around 300 timepieces a year and they are all carefully assembled by hand in the facility just outside Stockholm. The company seeks to manufacture as many parts themselves as possible and even make the digital technology in-house.
According to FIA regulations
In 2014 Halda unveiled yet another creation – the Race Pilot. This watch was developed together with racing drivers – one of them was the Swedish Formula 1 driver Marcus Ericsson. The intention is to assist professional racing drivers and their teams who work under extreme time pressure. Among the functions is the ability to measure speed and lap times – everything according to FIA regulations. We find a G-force meter that shows the extreme forces you're subjected to during acceleration, braking and turns. The watch also comes with information about 150 racing circuits around the world, including their length, record laps and height above sea level. It all comes in an elegant package and a very user-friendly interface.
In 2014 the Halda Race Pilot was announced as the winner of the prestigious prize The European Watch of the Year. Just like the Space Discovery, the Race Pilot has a docking station to which you can easily fit different watch modules. Once the day at the track is over and you want to change from a racing suit to a blazer, you can easily switch the racing module for an elegant, mechanical module.
Made of 18K gold