Eterna was founded in 1856 in Grenchen, in the Swiss canton of Solothurn, by Josef Girard and Urs Schild. The early firm produced ebauches (rough movements) and complete pocket watches, building a reputation for technical innovation in the late 19th century. Eterna was one of the first Swiss manufactures to focus on wristwatches at scale, and through the early 20th century the brand introduced a series of horological firsts.
The technical milestones came quickly. In 1908 Eterna built the first wristwatch with a mechanical alarm (the predecessor to the JLC Memovox by four decades). In 1914 Eterna produced the first wristwatch with a perpetual calendar complication. In 1932 the firm spun off its movement-making division as a separate company called ETA SA, which over the following decades grew to become the dominant Swiss movement supplier (and was later acquired by the Swatch Group). The Eterna brand kept the watch-finishing and case-making business and continued making complete watches.
The defining 20th-century Eterna milestone arrived in 1948 with the Eterna-Matic, the first automatic wristwatch movement to use a ball-bearing-mounted rotor. Previous automatic rotors used conventional pivot bearings, which suffered from friction and long-term wear; the ball-bearing system was significantly more efficient and durable, and became the standard for high-quality automatic movements. Eterna trademarked a five-ball logo to symbolise the innovation, and the five-ball mark has identified Eterna watches ever since. The same era produced the KonTiki dive watch (1958), commemorating Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 KonTiki balsa-raft expedition across the Pacific (Heyerdahl wore Eternas on the voyage).
Through the late 20th century, Eterna passed through multiple ownership changes (Pierre-Alain Blum, then various private investors). In 2011, Chinese investment firm Citychamp Watch & Jewellery (formerly China Haidian Holdings) acquired Eterna and has owned the brand since. The current Eterna catalogue centres on the KonTiki dive references, the Adventic sport line, the Eterna-Matic 1948 heritage three-hand reissue, and the Heritage dress collection. Retail spans approximately CHF 800 (KonTiki entry-level) to CHF 5,000+ (Heritage with chronograph). Annual production is small (estimated under 10,000 watches per year), and the brand has remained a quiet survivor of Swiss watchmaking, more widely respected for its 19th-century horological firsts than for high-volume modern production.
