The History of Swiss Watch Company Breguet

Breguet has a history spanning four centuries, a history so rich in inventions and innovations that it plays an integral role in the history of watchmaking.

With so many historical events surrounding Breguet, we will be able to trace its path from its origins to the present day in two articles.

The name of the brand, Breguet, comes from its founder, Abraham-Louis Breguet, who was born on January 10, 1747 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

Breguet in his younger years

Neuchâtel in the 18th century

His ancestors were French and Protestant, so he moved to Switzerland in 1685. In fact, with the repeal of the Edict of Nantes, violent persecution of Protestants broke out again in France.

Despite being forbidden to leave the country, 400,000 Protestants - including Breguet - fled France for fear of their lives.

His father, Jonah Louis, died when he was 11. Shortly thereafter, his mother, Suzanne Marguerite, remarried her husband's cousin, Joseph Tattet, a watchmaker.

In 1762, his new father Thatet took Breguet to Paris – a city in the midst of a period of relatively mild Protestant persecution – where he was apprenticed to a watchmaker (name not preserved) at Versailles.

After training under a watchmaker in Versailles, he went on to work for two of the most successful watchmakers of the time, such as Ferdinand Berthoud.

Mathematics proved essential to his work, so Breguet undertook further study by taking evening classes at Mazarine University under Ave Mari.

Breguet was able to look after his sister despite the hardships of losing his mother, stepfather, and his mentor Marie in a short space of time. Finally, in 1775, he produced the No. 39, on his own. He completed the work, Quai de l'Horloge , on the Île de la Cité, near Notre Dame Cathedral on an island in the Seine. He was 28 years old at the time.

Breguet's Workshop, Quai de l'Horloge, Paris

The Quai de l'Horloge today , Paris

That same year, he married Cécile Marie-Louise Lhuillier, the daughter of a founding Parisian bourgeois family, and part of her dowry probably went towards making watches.

With Ave Mari's guidance, Breguet soon received its first orders from members of the upper classes, including automatic watches such as the "Duc d'Orléans" in 1780 and the "Marie Antoinette" in 1782.

His self-winding or "perpetual" watches created a great deal of excitement at Versailles and throughout Europe. Although Breguet was not the first to make a self-winding watch, most experts agree that he was the first truly reliable and effective watch.


The clocks above and below are examples of Breguet's "perpetual" clocks, which are driven by the weight of a pendulum, a spring, which returns after each movement, pushing up two barrels and stopping when the springs are pushed up sufficiently.







Breguet watches achieved rapid success not only for the quality of their internal mechanisms but also for their design. Consider just the hands of the watches he designed in 1783. Made of gold or blued steel, they are decorated with unusual circular patterns with holes, which add an attractive elegance to the watch. The success of Breguet's hands is instantaneous, as evidenced by the fact that the term "Breguet hands" was soon included in the watchmaking vocabulary.



He used a white enamel plate for the dial, with typical Arabic numerals slightly tilted to the right, or a guilloche pattern, i.e. a reception pattern engraved on the dial using a manual turning. This guilloche pattern was not only decorative, but also served to reduce the glare of the metal dial.

Guilloché dial "Breguet pocket watch" 1783

In 1783, Breguet received a commission from one of Marie Antoinette's guards to make a watch as a gift for Queen Marie Antoinette, one of his watch's most ardent fans. The watch for the queen had to have all the functions known at the time. The commission had no delivery deadline or cost limit. The watch was completed in 1827, 44 years after the order was received and 34 years after Marie Antoinette's death. However, the result is considered by many watch experts to be the most important watch ever made for technical, aesthetic and historical reasons. Read more about the special watch, Breguet No. 160 "Marie Antoinette" here.

Other notable inventions of later years were the "Gonspring" (1783), a clock that struck a bell instead of a bell, followed by the "Parachute" (1790), or "elastic suspension" clock (as Breguet sometimes called it), a clock with a shock-resistant construction that made the clock more durable and resistant to shocks.



On the right is the minute repeater watch "Gonspring " and on the right is the "Parachute" which incorporates a structure to protect against shocks.


Breguet worked alone until 1787, when he made a partnership with Xavier Guidot, a dealer in clocks and watches, with whom Breguet gained further access to trade.

Although unsuccessful in 1791, this partnership was very important in the history of Breguet, as it provided the company with archival records of sales and factory costs, providing invaluable information.



As an example, for automatic watches, records show that Breguet sold 60 "Parachutes" between 1787 and 1823, and since there are no records for the years between 1780 and 1787, we can assume that between 20 and 30 watches were produced during that period.

However, this was a very dangerous time, as the storm of the French Revolution was rapidly approaching, especially for those close to the nobility and royal family.

By good fortune, Breguet became close friends with a revolutionary leader named Jean-Paul Marats, whose sister, Albertine, made watch hands for the watchmaker, and legend has it that Breguet rescued Marats from an angry mob that had gathered outside the home of a mutual acquaintance.

When Marat learned that Breguet was facing execution by guillotine, he arranged for Breguet to leave Paris and travel safely to Geneva, and then he moved to a place called Le Locle, where he set up a small workshop with a few employees.

In 1795, with the political situation in France now stable, Breguet returned to Paris, only to find his workshop destroyed. His friends, especially the Choisrouprasand family, helped him to re-establish his company on the Quai de l'Horloge.

The army and navy were in dire need of reliable watches, so Breguet's return was welcomed: the company was compensated for time lost during the terror and exempted from military service to hasten the rebuilding of its factories.

Although Breguet's years in exile were a serious setback for his work, he nevertheless used his time to develop a number of exceptional ideas and inventions which were soon recorded to have great success in the following years.

His technical and stylistic talents were not the only ones he excelled at; he was also a good businessman. As an example, in 1797, Breguet created one of the most famous pocket watches, the "Sousscription". Introduced in 1797, this watch had a large central barrel with a very simple custom movement and was sold on an advance basis, with a quarter of the watch price paid at the time of order (hence the name "Sousscription"). The "Sousscription" was a great success, and many different models were made, with different dials and gold and silver cases.


Breguet watch with subscription No. 542, diameter 62 mm, silver case, gold fillets and enamel dial

Breguet watch with subscription No.1391, diameter 57 mm, gold case and gold engine-turned dial

In the late 1790s, Breguet invented the "Montre à Tact", or "Tactful watch" in English.

In addition to the traditional method of opening the watch case, looking at the face and telling the time, the wearer could now check the time in the dark by rotating his hand or an arrow on the outside of the case clockwise until he felt it stop. Thanks to the knobs used to mark the hours around the case, one could feel which way the arrow was pointing and thus get an approximation of the correct time.


Breguet No. 608, cylinder watch 'Medallion Montre à Tact', sold to Mr. Bastreche in 1800 for 3000 francs. Hunter case in pink gold, enamel and diamonds.

The "a tact" structure allowed upper class people to tell the time without taking a watch out of their pocket and without getting annoyed or irritated. And in fact, another meaning of the French word "tact" is "sensitive to other things" (hence the English words "tact" and "tactful").

On June 26, 1801, the President of France granted Breguet a ten-year patent for the invention of the regulator clock.



The letter that Breguet wrote to the President of France describing his invention is quite interesting.

Minister of Citizens

I have the honor of presenting to you detailed notes of a new invention, an instrument for measuring time which I have named Regulator à Tourbillon. I am requesting a ten year patent on the construction of these clocks.

I have accomplished this by an invention which removes the errors arising from the difference in position of the center of gravity, and by distributing the friction equally to all parts of the regulator pivot and the axis of the bore in which it rotates, by means of a thick oil which always maintains the smoothness of the contact points, and by eliminating many other errors which affect the accuracy of the movement, large or small, in a way which is far beyond the present knowledge of our art, even by infinite trial and error.

It is after carefully considering all the advantages, including the skill in perfecting the method of manufacture, and the considerable expenses incurred in achieving success, that I have decided to apply for a patent. In order to establish the time of my invention and to compensate myself for the expenses incurred, I have decided to seek a patent.

Sincerely,

Breguet

Thanks to his deep understanding of the laws of physics, Breguet noticed how the watch was affected by changes in its position; the changes were most noticeable when the watch was held in a vertical position, since pocket watches were almost always kept in a vest pocket. He realized that the main reason for this behavior was crucial. Gravity could not be eliminated, but he thought it could be compensated for by placing a regulating device (a spring balance) and an escapement in a mobile carriage that rotated completely around its own axis once per minute.



His invention not only improved the accuracy of the pocket chronometer, but also created one of Breguet's most prized and desirable watches. You can read more about the history of the Tourbillon here.

Breguet No. 2567 Tourbillon Pocket Watch with Breguet's signature engine-turned silver dial and Roman numerals, blued steel Breguet hands - 1812

In 1807, Breguet took on his son Anthony-Louis (born 1776) as a full partner, from that point on the firm became known as "Breguet & Fils". As for the commercial side of the business, following the death of his wife in 1780, his sister-in-law Suzanne Lillier took charge.


Immersed in watchmaking from his early childhood, Anthony Louis quickly acquired great skill: he was trained in Paris by his father and in London by the great English chronometer maker and friend John Arnold.


In the last few years, Breguet experienced rapid growth abroad, especially in Russia, where he opened a branch in St. Petersburg in 1808. Unfortunately, he was forced to close the shop three years later when Tsar Alexander I banned French goods from entering Russia as a response to Napoleon's policies.


A letter from Breguet to Lazare Moreau, who was in charge of the St. Petersburg branch.


Napoleon himself was a good patron of Breguet and purchased many of Breguet's clocks, including the "Pandure Sympathique" among others. Napoleon would sometimes visit the Breguet workshops incognito.


Caroline Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon and wife of Joachim Murat, King of Naples, was one of Breguet's most important clients, purchasing 34 clocks and watches from 1808 to 1814.


Carolyn Murat Queen of Naples

In 1810, at the request of the Queen of Naples, Breguet conceived and created the first known wristwatch: No. 2639, a very thin, oval-shaped, complex repeater watch attached to a hair band or golden thread.

No sketch of its appearance remains in the archives, but fortunately it was left in the repair register of the after-sales service. On 8 March 1849, No. 2639 was sent for repair at the request of Countess Rasponi, who lived at 63, rue d'Anjou. The Countess was none other than Louise Murat, the fourth and last child of Joachim and Caroline. She had married Count Gyullio Rasponi in 1825.