BREGUET

The tourbillon is perhaps Breguet's most renowned creation. Even with today's superior technology, only the most expert watchmakers can create the tourbillon. Breguet's argument was that the gravity of a pocket watch (which was nearly usually worn vertically) caused timekeeping errors. He intended to rule out any positional variations with the tourbillon. As a result, he devised a miniature "clock inside a clock," in which the balance and escapement rotated on a shared axle within the movement once a minute, for example. This removed the majority of positional deviations, allowing many watches to achieve chronometer-like accuracy. Breguet's ideas secured his firm's success under the authority of two Bourbon kings, three First Republic governments, and Napoleon's reign.

In reality, General Bonaparte was a long-time Breguet customer. General Bonaparte bought three watches from Breguet in April 1798, a month before embarking on his Egyptian campaign: a repeater watch, a travelling and repeating clock, and a self-winding repeater watch.The clocks were purchased for two purposes: 1) to serve as symbols of his authority and social standing, and 2) to function as practical timepieces.

In the same year, during the national exposition, the famous Breguet sympathique (synchronizing) clock was unveiled to the public for the first time. The sympathique clock was a two-piece device that included a clock and a watch. The clock was made to retain the watch, which was automatically adjusted and reset when put in a recess. Despite the fact that the clock had increased Breguet's popularity, it was still difficult and expensive to build. During his lifetime, Breguet only sold five separate specimens, all of which were acquired by royalty.

Within the first decade of the nineteenth century, Abraham-Louis Breguet had added two more notable patrons to his list. Caroline Murat, Napoleon Bonaparte's younger sister and Queen of Naples, was the first. The Queen of Naples purchased 34 clocks and watches from Breguet between 1808 and 1814, making her one of his most prestigious customers. Her appointment, however, in 1810, would make an everlasting effect on the history of horology. The first wristwatch was completed and handed to Queen in 1812. It was an ultra-thin, oblong-shaped repeating watch with a thermometer fixed on a hair wristlet intertwined with gold thread.

Tsar Alexandre I was the second of these illustrious supporters. On April 2, 1814, a mystery visitor to Breguet's office revealed himself to be none other than the Tsar of All Russias, who had traveled secretly with just one manservant. Before enjoying a simple supper, the two men had a long talk about watchmaking. The tsar acquired two timepieces on that day, one of which was a repeater, according to records. He also made an order for eight 'pedometers,' or metronomes for controlling military marches, which he expected to receive between 1820 and 1822.

Abraham-Louis Breguet's firm reached a pinnacle of economic success in the last ten years of his life, with assets estimated at almost 800,000 francs in 1823. He was already a Horloger de la Marine when Louis XVIII made him one, and he went on to become a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, a member of the French Board of Longitude, and a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1816. At the age of 76, Abraham-Louis Breguet died unexpectedly on September 17, 1823.

The English Brown family owned Breguet from 1870 to 1970.

Edward Brown, a senior manufacturing manager who purchased Breguet from Abraham-Louis' grandson, Louis-François, an engineer, was of English descent. Brown was in charge of the brand throughout the stormy late-nineteenth-century French politics. Only after Edward's death did the company's revenues return to the levels they were before 1870. Edward's son, Edouard, ran the company until his brother Henry took it in 1912. During the quartz crises in the 1970s and 1980s, ownership changed hands multiple times after the Brown family. Breguet's then-owner Chaumet abandoned its French manufacturing in 1976 and shifted manufacture to Switzerland's Vallée de Joux.