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1755 Founded in Geneva, Switzerland by Jean-Marc Vacheron.
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1785 After 30 years at the bench, Jean-Marc Vacheron handed the workshop to the next generation; his son Abraham kept the business going through the upheavals that followed the French Revolution.
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1819 The founder's grandson Jacques Barthélémi Vacheron went into partnership with businessman François Constantin, and the firm became Vacheron et Constantin. Writing from Turin on 5 July 1819, Constantin coined the line that became the house motto: do better if possible, and that is always possible.
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1839 The firm hired engineer Georges-Auguste Leschot, who adapted the pantograph to watchmaking so movement parts could be made to standard sizes and swapped between watches; in 1844 he won Geneva's Prix de la Rive for the work.
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1880 The Maltese cross became the official emblem and was registered with the Swiss federal intellectual property office in Bern; WatchTime reports it was filed in four variants.
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1906 For its 222nd anniversary the house launched the 222, a monobloc case on a fitted bracelet with a porthole-style screwed-down bezel.
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2004 On 9 August 2004 the company moved into a new Manufacture in Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva, designed by Bernard Tschumi in the shape of half a Maltese cross; a second production site opened in Le Brassus, Vallée de Joux, in October 2013.