Since its founding by Eugène Meylan in 1914, Glycine has been producing watches at its factory in Bienne, Switzerland.

Meylan was an uncompromising watch engineer who strove for perfection and nothing less. He had a profound understanding of both the market demands and the possibilities offered by the technological advances of the time. Very soon, he succeeded in producing extremely precise movements , enabling Glycine to put on the market the finest movements,

Glycine became a supplier to the wealthy people who valued highly these works of fine craftsmanship. However, Meylan did not stop there. Around 1931, he presented to the world market a well-functioning self-winding watch, entirely of his own invention, a sensational performance that, for lack of capital, could not be exploited commercially. Some of these GLYCINE Eugène Meylan SA self-winding watches can still be found in the collectors' market.

In 1945, Glycine geared up production and rapidly presented a complete range of automatic (self-winding) watches, making use of the most advanced technologies.

1952 saw the birth of the famous VACUUM chronometers.  In 1953, the AIRMAN line was presented to the world market and immediately received an enthusiastic welcome. Now, in addition to regular local time, world time was available at a glance. The steadily growing class of jet-setters and frequent travellers readily took to the convenience of having two time zones on their wrist.

The markets were now ready for watches of real value, Beginning in the late 90s and in quick succession, a rich assortment of mechanical watches, with steadily growing diameters, was presented to the market, from the 37 mm COMBAT to the 42 mm OBSERVER, the 44 and 46 mm INCURSORE, the 48 mm KMU and, to top it off, the 52 mm F 104, one of the biggest wrist watches ever produced.