Four and a half decades after making waves at the Basel watch show, the audaciously innovative brand AMIDA has returned to the world of horology. Originally celebrated for creating the first-ever mechanical “casquette” style driver’s watch, AMIDA carved out a niche for itself with its forward-looking, space-age designs and commitment to creative engineering. The brand's momentum was abruptly halted by the Quartz Crisis, forcing it into a long intermission. However, this pause was not an ending. In 2024, after years of planning, a new team of pioneers has reclaimed the name and its patents, determined to reignite the brand’s rebellious spirit and “resume the future” of watchmaking.
Founded in Grenchen, Switzerland, by Joseph Zwahlen, AMIDA quickly established a reputation for democratic and innovative watchmaking. The brand's creative genius is best exemplified by two groundbreaking patents that redefined how time could be displayed. The first was for a "jump-hour" mechanism, which presented time in a new, digital-like format. This was followed by the revolutionary Light Reflecting Display (LRD), a system that used a sapphire prism to project the time from horizontal discs into a crisp, vertical readout. This ingenious design, likened to a "submarine periscope for the wrist," was created specifically for drivers, allowing them to see the time without turning their wrist.
The culmination of this ingenuity was the AMIDA Digitrend. Debuting at the Basel show, the Digitrend was an instant icon, a radical fusion of futuristic design and purely mechanical watchmaking. Its distinctive "casquette" shape and unique time display captured the imagination of a generation. Now, under the new leadership of Matthieu Allègre, Bruno Herbet, and Clément Meynier, AMIDA is back. The new team has meticulously refined every component of the legendary Digitrend, ensuring it meets modern standards of craftsmanship while preserving the stubbornly creative and rebellious soul that first made AMIDA a legend.