Kings and nobles from all over Europe were friends and confidants of Abraham-Louis Breguet, considered the greatest watchmaker of his time. His career began with a series of important advances: the creation of perpétuelle automatic watches, the introduction of gongs for repeater watches and the first anti-shock protection for balance wheel pivots.
But he shone like never before when (after a period of return to his native Switzerland to avoid the excesses of the French Revolution) he returned to Paris overflowing with ideas. He then created the Breguet balance spring, his first carriage watch (he sold it to Bonaparte for his advance in Egypt!) and the most impressive of all his inventions. The tourbillon. His great invention. The great ingenuity that forever revolutionized fine watchmaking, patented in 1801 and made him the indispensable watchmaker for the scientific, military, financial and diplomatic elites of the time.
“Their clocks dominated the courts of Europe. For his most distinguished clients, he designed his most notable pieces, anticipating the wristwatch by a century for Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, in 1810. He received many honors in recognition of his enormous contribution to the watchmaking. Appointed member of the Longitude Committee as a manufacturer of chronometers for the Navy, he entered the Academy of Sciences and received the Legion of Honor from Louis XVIII,” explains Emmanuel Breguet, belonging to the seventh generation of this family of inventors and vice president and responsible for the Breguet heritage that now proudly shows the new step that the manufacture has made on this brilliant invention.
In honor of all that legacy that Emmanuel Breguet studies and preserves, two new tourbillons shine within the Classique collection. Feminine and ultra-complicated, they are the Starry Night (a shower of diamonds seems to slide over the pearly and lacquered midnight blue dial and at 6 o'clock, the polished dial opens into a curved space to reveal the tourbillon in all its splendor and the star fleeting that passes through it with an imposing halo that dazzles with its 45 diamonds set with the “snow” technique and the equally impressive Hit of Effect (its rose gold case displays a dial with 281 diamonds and the tourbillon, majestically located in the lower part of the dial, is integrated into an oval, curved and polished opening, enhanced by a curved bar set with 14 diamonds) that share a 35 mm case, water resistant to 30 meters, and the 187 D movement, with a balance which oscillates at a frequency of 2.5 Hz, beating inside it.
That force, that of the tourbillon, also beats with its own light for the first time in the Marine, in the new Marine Tourbillon 5577, which shows that this complication changed forever on June 26, 1801, the way of measuring time and that, As Emmanuel Breguet points out, “it continues to fascinate more than two centuries after its creation.”
But this Breguet who signs the 451-page book, Breguet: Watchmakers Since 1775, which explains the history of the watchmaking saga, explains that he grew up knowing that his family was mainly dedicated to the aviation business. In fact, Breguet aviation was founded by Louis Charles Breguet in 1911. That is why his confusion, as a young man, is completely understandable: “when I was a child, Breguet in France was always related to aviation because my grandfather owned a aircraft manufacturer that was quite famous in France,” he recalls.
Learning and studying daily about the brand, he understands that the Breguet surname itself carries a certain responsibility and even more so since he works for the company now in the hands of the Swatch group (since 19999 which his family sold a century before he was born. When Emmanuel joined To Breguet at the age of 30, his first task was to read everything available about Breguet and write reference books. A journey that does not stop and that allows him to discover new things, especially in management. And smile when remembering that Breguet who started it All in all, Abraham, "was not a typical watchmaker. He was also a great businessman and entrepreneur, an excellent salesman and a better public relations man."
All the pieces that Abraham-Louis Breguet manufactured, and it is estimated that there were more than 5,000 watches, “are registered with serial number, description, price and who was their first buyer,” explains Emmanuel Breguet who, with time, patience and Exhaustive monitoring at the most prestigious auctions has managed to bring together at least 300 of the most important pieces for the firm's museum.
Today, a total of about 2,500 watches are preserved in museums and private collections, ranging from the simplest pieces to the highest complications with prices that ranged between 600 gold francs and could reach 5,000. They were then, explains Emmanuel Breguet, pieces already highly valued at the time considering that "in comparison, a good watch by another master was around 100 francs."
Agustín de Betancourt, founder of the Official School of the Corps of Engineers and Civil Engineers, was one of the best friends of the creator of the tourbillon and also responsible for its enormous success and entry into the Spanish court. Godoy, the dukes of Infantado, Fernán Núñez and Feria or Prince Fernando de Borbón, later Fernando VII, had their Breguets, which demonstrates the excellence not only with which Abraham-Louis Breguet assembled his watches but also the unbeatable design he had for "moving in the most privileged social environments and his innate ability to make friends with the ambassadors in Paris, who later spoke of the wonders of Breguet upon returning to their countries."
This is how he managed to make even Tsar Alexander I feel the need to visit his workshops in 1814 or how, despite the fact that at the beginning of the 19th century France was at war with the main European nations, Breguet managed to create a very special piece for the Ottoman sultan. Abraham-Louis Breguet was succeeded by his son Antoine-Louis, who died in 1823 and today the brand belongs to the Swatch Group, faithful to the legacy and history of that first Breguet who revolutionized fine watchmaking with his talent and that tourbillon that allowed for the first once the maximum excellence in the measurement of time.
Emmanuel Breguet preserves the archives and looks after a super exclusive collection that now exceeds 300 pieces (in 2012, the firm paid seven million Swiss francs for two A.-Louis watches) created by the Breguet family who abandoned watchmaking in 1870. to dedicate himself to new technologies (electricity, telegraphs, telephones, aviation, etc.), maintaining, however, friendly relations with the successive owners of the watch company. “If Breguet has a special place in our cultural heritage, it is because its founder, Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823), established the standard by which the best watchmaking has been judged since then,” say those responsible for the watchmaking today. Swatch group that also never tire of continuing to light the flame of innovation.
The tourbillon was officially born on June 26, 1801 “from the scientific and horological mind of Abraham-Louis Breguet. His starting point was the observation that the Earth's gravity was the enemy of the regularity of watch movements, since at that time watches were mainly worn vertically along the body. The effect of gravity caused variations in the rhythm,” says Emmanuel Breguet now, 223 years later, who has studied like no one else the greatness of the Breguet that preceded him seven generations earlier.
”To solve this problem of Earth's gravity, the founder of the House of Breguet came up with the idea of installing the entire escapement inside a mobile carriage that made one complete rotation per minute. In this way, errors were periodically reproduced and canceled each other out. Additionally, the perpetual change in the contact point of the balance pivots in their jeweled bearings ensured better lubrication. This reasoning marked the invention of the tourbillon,” he concludes.
