Franck MullerFranck Muller is a contemporary watchmaker born in July 1958 to a Swiss father and a mother of Italian descent. He spent three years at the Geneva Ecole d’Horlogerie, where he was a brilliant student, ranking first in his class and earning two diplomas. He was awarded, as a prize, a Rolex watch to be put together. "Rather than just putting it together in the classic manner, I had fun transforming it, adding a retrograde perpetual calendar, which allowed me to sell it to a collector. The sum therby earned allowed Franck Muller to finance his first workshop, in Geneva’s Eaux-Vives quarter.He rapidly gained the confidence of prestigious collectors and private museums, who called upon him to restore their antique watches. However, his quick mind and nimble fingers soon led him to create his own mechanisms.In 1983, Muller created the first watch signed "Franck Genève”, and astonished the watchmaking world with his research into new conceptions of the tourbillon. Franck Muller is particularly fond of tourbillon wristwatches with jumping hours, tourbillon wristwatches with minute repeater, perpetual calendar tourbillon wristwatches with split-seconds chronograph, and wristwatches with Grande and Petite Sonnerie, perpetual calendar and equation of time. In order to integrate such mechanisms into a wrstwatch, extreme miniaturization, and therefore great dexterity, are necessary.Franck Muller went one step further in 1984, creating his own company, "Diamu", in order to commercialize complicated mechanisms. He hired two watchmakers, furnished the movement of the "Michelangelo" watch of Ulysse Nardin, and launched the first watch with his name, a rectangular watch with calendar and moon phases, date and month.At the same time he created his famous “world premieres”, one-of-a-kind pieces such as the "Tourbillon with jumping hours" which he signed "Franck Genève" and for which he always registered a patent.In 1992, the Franck Muller company was founded, the first Franck Muller store in the world was opened, and Muller created the most complicated wristwatch ever made in horological history.In 1995 the new Franck Muller administrative and production headquarters were inaugurated in Genthod, near Geneva, Switzerland.Today, with sales of more than 25 000 watches annually, 240 employees in Switzerland, and the recent opening of his "Watchland", a new architectural universe honoring the art of watchmaking and savoir-faire, Franck Muller can look to the future with serenity.Some observers go so far as to say that Franck Muller is making history in contemporary watchmaking. He has certainly made an important contribution, by blending complications and miniaturization in a wristwatch, a technique which proves his exceptional talent.His hallmark is his ability to respect and perpetuate watchmaking traditions while making important innovations. He is guided by the principle that watchmaking is not just an art, but also a science. Franck Muller is one of only a few prestigious manufactures whose creator signs each single model in his lifetime. This is what makes this brand so exclusive and enhances the uniqueness of each collection.The creation of the most complicated watch in the world in 1992—enriched by new functions in 1998 and hailed again as a world record—brought worldwide attention and confirmed the international prestige of the company. Each year since then, a new and unique timepiece has been launched—a world first repeated over and over. The complications, so successfully combined, delight the horological world, and the forms, richer every year, continually reconfirm the creator’s unique style, which is immediatly and unmistakably recognizable.Among the newer creations are “Casablanca”, “Havana”, “Master Banker” or “Conquistador”, to only name a few, each a faithful interpretation of the original and a confirmation of the creative talent of Franck Muller. Franck Muller’s masterpieces, veritable collectors timepieces, are today exhibited in the most prestigious cities of the world, from Europe to Asia as well as America, the Middle-East and Australia