Timepieces Trade Market

Breguet : History

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It would take a whole book to list ail the achievements of the genius reverently proclaimed as the watchmaker who condensed two centuries of watchmaking into just fifty years. For this reason the life of Abraham-Louis Breguet, born to a French family in Neuchâtel in 1747, must be confined to the essentials.

His marriage to the daughter of a wealthy bourgeois enabled him to set up his own workshops in the watchmaking quarter of Paris in 1775.
Exiled by the French Revolution to the town of his birth, he returned to the French capital to embark on the zenith of his career from 1795.
Watches signed Breguet ticked for tsars, kings and emperors, lords and dukes. They accompanied Alexander von Humboldt on his voyages of discovery and secured their entree to world literature through the pens of Balzac, Dumas, Stendhal and Jules Verne. The fact that both crowned and uncrowned heads chose Breguet is due largely to the originality of his watchmaking.

Among the master's inventions are the ultimate pocket-watches, the self winding "montres perpétuelles," the tact watches that told the time by touch, the tourbillon, the so-called Breguet balance-spring with its raised terminal curve and the "parachute" shock-protection for the balance-staff.

The height of his achievement was the Marie-Antoinette watch in which he combined ail his complications. This magnificent watch had its home in the Mayer Memorial Museum in Jerusalem until Easter 1968 when it vanished in a burglary. It has never been seen since, except presumably by the "collecto" who possesses it.

In 1807, Breguet's son, Antoine-Louis, joined the business, and in 1833, it was taken over by his grandson Louis Breguet. But they were not in the same league as the founder of the company, who died in 1823. In 1870, the name passed to the works foreman Edward Brown. 100 years later it was acquired by the Chaumet brothers, Jacques and Pierre Chaumet, jewelers in Paris.

After their inglorious bankruptcy in 1987, the Investors Corporation became masters of the House of Breguet.
The brand's watches now made at its sister company Nouvelle Lemania. Since mid-September 1999, the Bienne Swatch Group have had the say at the Groupe Horloger Breguet.