The company began in 1853 as an act of local self-defence. To counter migration away from the Waldenburg Valley, the municipality of Waldenburg established the Société d'Horlogerie à Waldenbourg — the Waldenburg Watchmaking Company — to give the valley work. In 1859 Gédéon Thommen, an entrepreneur from Waldenburg, and Louis Tschopp, a watchmaker from Biel/Bienne, took the company over; Tschopp left the business in 1869, and the Thommen name has been attached to it ever since.

For close to 170 years the Thommen watch factory in Switzerland has been developing solid mechanical watches, tested and prized by people who carry the highest responsibility for themselves and others — in aviation, sport, the military and mountaineering. The brand's own summary of its purpose is blunt and useful: wherever a watch is more than a fashion attribute, and where reliability and robustness are a must, is where its watches belong.

The company is today co-owned and managed by the Thommen family as GT Thommen Watch AG, with Andreas Thommen, representing the fifth generation, running the business in Switzerland. The dial signature says it plainly: made in Switzerland since 1853.