TAG Heuer 360 Museum - 150 Years of Innovation and Precision

This year TAG Heuer has proudly inaugurated its first museum celebrating the remarkable 150-year watch-making history of the brand. The glamorous inauguration event, attended by over 250 journalists, retailers and VIPs, took place on January 30 and was hosted by Lewis Hamilton, the 23-year-old Formula 1 superstar (Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F 1 Team), universally famous as the best rookie ever and the 2-nd at FIA 2007 F1 world championship.

The unique 360 Degree Watchmaking Museum welcomes its visitors to the ground floor of the company's avant-garde headquarters in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. The exhibition area has been designed as a perfect reflection of the TAG Heuer unique heritage in the field of timekeeping precision and prestigious sports, and motor-racing in particular.

The museum celebrates the brand's successful partnerships with the world's most prominent professional athletes and its deep involvement in timing most prestigious sporting events. More than 300 TAG Heuer milestone watches are displayed in the 360 Museum, as the best proof of the brand's continuous striving for ultimate precision.

The museum covers 200 square meters, designed by Eric Carlson and his architecture studio Carbondale headquartered in Paris, in close cooperation with 'dUCKS Sceno,' specializing in scenography and museography, and the TAG Heuer personal team.

The layout and design of the state-of-the-art facility was meant to resemble the space between the dial and the crystal of a timepiece. The architecture of the museum allows natural light to flow seamlessly throughout the building from the entrance to the roof via the special elevator tubes and windows.

Visitors to the museum are amazed to see one of the first 360-degree conical movie screens ever created. The screen represents an innovative technique of displaying the necessary information in a really impressive way. It is operated by twelve high-performance retro-projectors, displaying over one million images in a single hour. All the pieces are synchronized into one moving 360-degree centripetal image, creating a unique dynamic presentation.

The TAG Heuer's history was highlighted by the creation of a stopwatch, accurate to 1/100th of a second. The Mikrograph and Microsplit introduced in 1916 served as the base for the brand's pocket chronometers used as the official timing instruments during the Olympic Games in Antwerp (1920), Paris (1924) and Amsterdam (1928). Over the six decades to follow, TAG Heuer produced thousands of Mikrographs and many models relevant to this era are displayed in the museum.