A.Lange & Söhne
Ferdinand Adolph Lange was born in Dresden, Germany on February 25, 1815. His parents divorced and he was adopted by a foster family. In 1829, he entered the Technische Bildungsanstalt of Dresden and began studying his craft unde Johann Christian Friedrich Gutkaes, who was second mechanic at the Mathematics and Physics Salon which provided an astronomical clock with a mercury compensation pendulum for the observatory. By 1835 he finished his apprenticeship and began working for Gutkaes for another two years. In 1837 Lange moved to Paris. In Paris he worked with Austrian watchmaker Joseph Thaddäus Winnerl who invented the split-seconds chronograph and stayed there for four years. After four years in Paris he went to Switzerland and Great Britain breifly before he returned to Dresden in 1841 to became partners with Gutkaes. Here he began building complicated watches and documenting each of them. He wanted to found a watch manufacturing plant in Saxony and wrong to the government minister Von Lindenau and councillor Weissenbach to ask for a commission from the government to grant him a business license. On December 7, 1845, he founded A. Lange & Cie, which later became A. Lange & Söhne in Glashütte and started with a team of 15 apprentices. Soon after, he built his first micrometer in Dresden from the plans in his journey book from when he was traveling in France. It could measure millimeters to the thousandth. Along with a measurement system, he invented various tools. In 1868, Ferdinand A. Lange's elder son Richard joined the company which is when the name officially changed before other children joined the company as he had 7. When Richard joined he was looking for more politcal responsibility and became the mayor of Glasshutte. When his other son Emil joined the company they were growing rapidly and in 1873, the company moved to the Stammhaus its new headquarters. Emil became the business brains and Richard furthered the watchmaking advancing his father's inventions and patents such as quarter repeater and chronograph. The business continued to grow with a solid focus on watchmaking while emil grew the distribution internationally.
