Titus

Titus is one of the Swiss watch companies founded by the cutting edge inventor, watchmaker, and horological author, Paul Ditisheim. A child prodigy who graduated from the Horological School of La Chaux de Fonds when he was 13, Ditisheim worked at his father’s company, Vulcain, before founding the watchmaking firms of Titus and Solvil in Geneva, Switzerland. During his brilliant career, Ditisheim won numerous chronometer performance competitions with innovations of his own design, including the 1903 Kew Observatory Contest.

The current company using the “Solvil et Titus” brand name appears to be an Asian company and many of the Titus branded watches being sold on a popular auction site are coming out of Hong Hong.

Some of these NOS Titus watches contain the ESA 9162 / 9164 tuning fork movement and it appears these have an interesting connection with Omega. Although there is no definitive proof, it seems that Titus bought up all the old tuning fork stock from Omega when they stopped manufacturing their F300 Hz range of watches in the 1970s. Why do we think this?:

  • Many of the Titus Tuning Fork watch cases are identical to Omega F300 cases
  • The crystals in these Titus Tuning Fork cases still have the tiny Omega logo in the centre of them
  • There is evidence that the crown tops have been filed down to remove the Omega logo
  • There is evidence that the case backs have been turned down to remove the Omega markings

You be the judge. Take a look at my Titus Tuning Fork watch below. I still can’t decide whether these have been in storage for the last 30 years or whether someone has recently starting assembling them from parts: