This year, Revolution turns 20. Two decades of chronicling watches, people and ideas have given us a front-row seat to a remarkable story: how an age-old craft has both preserved its soul and reinvented itself for the 21st century. To celebrate, we’ve chosen over 100 names and milestones that, for us, define the era so far. From leaders to watches, you can see the whole list here.

I believe I may have been one of the last people to speak to Luigi Macaluso. I had visited him in October 2010 for a tour of his manufacture, and had the pleasure of a convivial lunch. For those who never knew him, he was, simply speaking, one of the kindest, warmest individuals in our industry. It was always a bit of a surprise to me that he’d won two Italian Rally Car championships, such was his gentile demeanor. On a train back to Geneva the following day, I was shocked to learn of his premature passing.

Macaluso was a distributor for Blancpain, Hamilton and Breitling, and is often credited as the champion behind the resurrection and popularity of the Breitling Chronomat in the Italian market in the ’80s. Clearly, he had a desire to be the creator of watches rather than simply distributing them, and soon he joined the board of Girard-Perregaux before becoming the President of its parent company, Sowind Group, in 1992. One of the first acts of marketing genius by Macaluso was to use his autosports and Turin-based contacts to create a partnership with Ferrari. From 1994 to 2004, Girard-Perregaux and Ferrari collaborated on some of the best co-branded timepieces ever created. Drawing on Constant Girard’s 19th century design, Macaluso was also at the vanguard of the return to complications, launching the Tourbillon with Three Gold Bridges wristwatch.

Girard-Perregaux Three Golden Bridge Tourbillon, circa 2003 (Image: Antiquorum)

Through the early 2000s, Girard-Perregaux was a real force in high watchmaking, and it was said that Macaluso took pleasure in designing each timepiece to his own refined tastes. Said Georges Kern, “Gino Macaluso was an architect, and you felt it in the way he built products. He had an architectural approach to the products, and I think they were aesthetically appealing.”

One of Macaluso’s signature timepieces combined the world time and chronograph functions into one package and was named the WW.TC. In 2008, Macaluso unveiled one of the most significant breakthroughs in high watchmaking — the Constant Escapement was the first wristwatch where every impulse to the balance has a constant force regardless of mainspring torque. By 2009, he had orchestrated a strategic agreement with the Kering Group. It was with much sadness that our industry received the news of his premature passing in 2010.

Girard-Perregaux WW.TC (World Time Chronograph), circa 2000s (Image: Antiquorum)