Salute to FA Lange

IT wasn't a promising start. The young men offered to Ferdinand Adolph Lange to pick and train to become watchmakers to get a watch factory off the ground in the German town of Glashutte in 1844 were "one assistant painter, 12 straw weavers, four domestic servants, one farmhand, one quarry worker and one vineyard worker", he recorded in his journal. Hardly the types you imagine would make it as a watchmaker - and surely not the types who laid the foundations for what A Lange & Sohne is today - a great watchmaking company.

Indeed, according to the company, some of the recruits were later sacked because of "a lack of aptitude". "Initially, he (FA Lange) hardly had qualified personnel, except for Adolf Schneider, who later became his brother-in-law," it says.

But Lange persevered with his remaining team of novices, who came to constitute the core of A Lange & Sohne's original crew. He was driven by a social conscience to create a modern watchmaking industry to provide jobs and prosperity for Glashutte.