ABRAHAM-LOUIS BREGUET
10 JANUARY 1747 – 17 SEPTEMBER 1823
Abraham-Louis Breguet is the founder of the Breguet company, which is now the luxury watch division of the Swiss Swatch Group. He is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest horologists of all time.
Breguet was born in Neuchâtel to Jonas-Louis Breguet and Suzanne-Marguerite Bollein. Breguet’s father died in 1758, when he was ten, and his formal schooling ended when he was 12. Breguet’s mother remarried to Joseph Tattet, who came from a family of watchmakers. Tattet had a showroom in Paris; the family tried for some time to entice the young Breguet into the trade, to no avail, but he eventually took to it with great interest and in 1762, aged 15, he was sent to be apprenticed to an unknown Versailles master watchmaker. At this time the Court had a great influence on the trade and the best watchmakers established themselves around Versailles.
The young Breguet soon “astonished” his master with his aptitude and intelligence, and to further his education he took evening classes in mathematics at the Collège Mazarin under Abbé Marie, who became a friend and mentor to the young watchmaker. Through his role as tutor to the dukes of Angoulême and de Berri, Abbé Marie was able to arrange for Breguet to be introduced to King Louis XVI of France, and the king’s interest in mechanics led to many royal commissions for the rising watchmaker, including a perpetuelle (self-winding watch), with which the king was especially pleased. Unfortunately, Marie met a tragic end, either through murder or suicide, and soon after Breguet lost both his mother and his step-father, leaving him to support himself and his younger sister. How he managed this in the period between his parents’ deaths and the establishment of his business is unknown.
Breguet was allowed to marry in 1775 after finishing his apprenticeship. He and his bride, Cécile Marie-Louise L’Huillier, set up their home and the Breguet watchmaking company; its first known address was at 51, quai de l’Horloge in the Île de la Cité in Paris (by the 1920s this location was designated as #39). Ca. 1812 the firm’s address was 79, quai de l’Horloge du Palais, although Salomons speculated that this might have been merely a change of number and name, not of actual location. By the year of Breguet’s death in 1823 the firm also had a shop at 4, place de la Bourse, which is known because both addresses appear on the label of watch #4004. The firm later moved to Rue de la Paix and in the early 20th century to 2, rue Édouard-VII.
Breguet invented innovative escapements, including the tourbillon, automatic winding mechanisms, and the overcoil (an improvement of the balance spring with a raised outer coil). Within ten years Breguet had commissions from the aristocratic families of France and even the French queen, Marie-Antoinette. Cécile died in 1780. He met Abraham-Louis Perrelet in Switzerland and became a Master Clockmaker in 1784. In 1787 Abraham-Louis established a partnership with Xavier Gide, which lasted until 1791.
Ca. 1792 the Duke of Orléans went to England and met John Arnold, Europe’s leading watch and clockmaker. The Duke showed Arnold a clock made by Breguet, who was so impressed that he immediately travelled to Paris and asked Breguet to accept his son as an apprentice.
As Breguet’s fame gradually increased he became friendly with revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat, who also hailed from Neuchâtel. Salomons’ biography records that Marat and Breguet were at the house of a mutual friend one day when an angry crowd gathered outside, shouting “Down with Marat!”, but Breguet contrived their escape by disguising Marat as an old woman, and they left the house arm in arm, unmolested. In 1793 Marat discovered that Breguet was marked for the guillotine, possibly because of his friendship with Abbé Marie (and/or his association with the royal court); in return for his own earlier rescue, Marat arranged for a safe-pass that enabled Breguet to escape to Switzerland, from where he travelled to England. He remained there for two years, during which time he worked for King George III. When the political scene in France stabilised, Breguet returned to Paris.
In 1795 Breguet returned to Paris with many ideas for innovations in watch and clock making. He set up business again in Quai de l’Horloge and quickly established a reputation among the new wealthy classes in the Empire. Breguet did not staff his workshops in the traditional way, with unskilled apprentices, but instead sought out the finest available watchmakers in Paris, whom he employed to make watches to his own designs. At the 1798 Exposition des produits de l’industrie française Breguet was given an honorable distinction, the highest award, for “a free escapement with constant force, applicable to the improvement of both astronomical clocks and longitude clocks. This clock has the very singular effect of resetting the time in a watch.”
Circa 1807 Breguet brought in his son, Antoine-Louis (born 1776) as a business partner, and from this point the firm became known as Breguet et Fils Breguet had previously sent his son to London to study with the great English chronometer maker, John Arnold, and such was the mutual friendship and respect between the two men that Arnold, in turn, sent his son, John Roger, to spend time with Breguet. Breguet met another watchmaker Louis Moinet, recognised his worth at once, and the two men worked closely together. From 1811 on, Moinet became Breguet’s personal adviser.
Breguet became a member of the Bureau des Longitudes in 1814 and the following year gained an official appointment as chronometer-maker to the French Navy. He entered the French Academy of Sciences in 1816 as a full member, and received the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour from the hands of Louis XVIII in 1819. Breguet’s name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
According to Salomons’ biography, Breguet was known for his kindness and good humour. It is recorded that if a workman came to Breguet with a finished piece of work and an invoice for payment, and Breguet was satisfied with the work, then if the invoice ended in a zero, Breguet would add a tail to the zero to make it a ‘9’, thereby enabling the workman to be paid nine francs more than he had asked for. He was also known for his encouragement of his young apprentices, often advising them “Do not be discouraged, or allow failure to dishearten you.”
The business grew from strength to strength, and when Abraham-Louis Breguet died in 1823 it was carried on by Louis-Antoine. After Antoine-Louis retired in 1833 (he died in 1858) the business continued under Abraham-Louis’ grandson Louis François Clément Breguet (1804–1883); his great-grandson Louis Antoine (1851–1882) was the last of the Breguet family to run the business. Although he had two sons and a daughter, they did not enter the business, so he took on noted English watchmaker Edward Brown of Clerkenwell to look after the Paris factory. Brown eventually became his partner and, after Breguet’s death, the owner and head of the company. His sons Edward and Henry Brown headed the firm into the 20th century and after Edward retired in the early 1900s, Henry became the sole proprietor.
Works and Influence
Breguet made three series of watches, and the highest numbering of the three reached 5120, so in all it is estimated that the firm produced around 17,000 timepieces during Breguet’s life. Because of his minute attention to detail and his constant experimentation, no two Breguet pieces are exactly alike. Following his introduction to the court, Queen Marie-Antoinette developed a fascination for Breguet’s unique self-winding watch and Louis XVI of France bought several pieces. His achievements soon attracted a wealthy and influential clientele that comprised a veritable “Who’s Who” of the period: Louis XVI and his Queen Marie-Antoinette, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joséphine de Beauharnais, Louis XVIII, Alexander I of Russia, George IV of the United Kingdom, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.
Legend has it that it was the ill-fated French queen herself who commissioned Breguet’s masterpiece, the “Marie Antoinette” (No. 160), which is now widely regarded as one of the most important and valuable timepieces ever made. In fact, it was commissioned in 1783 by a member of the Marie-Antoinette Guards, possibly as a gift for the queen, and it took almost twenty years to complete—work stopped for around seven years (1789–1795) during the period of Breguet’s exile—and it was not finished until around 1802. Even by the standards of the day it was an astronomically expensive piece; the commission specifically called for every watch function and complication known at that time and the use of the most valuable materials (including gold, platinum, rubies and sapphires), with no limit placed on time or cost. Breguet company records indicate that the factory costs eventually came to the colossal sum of 30,000 francs – more than six times the cost of Breguet’s other major work, (No. 92), which was sold to the Duc De Preslin for 4800 francs. The “Marie Antoinette” remained in the possession of the Breguet company until it was sold to Sir Spencer Brunton in 1887, eventually finding its way into the collection of Breguet expert David Lionel Goldsmid-Stern-Salomons in the 1920s.
Breguet’s most remarkable piece anticipated the wristwatch by a century; he designed this, together with his friend John Arnold, for Caroline Bonaparte, Queen of Naples, in 1810. Many honours recognised his enormous contribution to horology. Each watch from his workshops demonstrated the latest horological improvements in an original movement, mostly fitted with lever or ruby-cylinder escapements that he perfected. Breguet took refuge in Switzerland from the excesses of the French Revolution. He returned to Paris overflowing with the ideas that produced the Breguet balance-spring, his first carriage clock (sold to House of Bonaparte), the sympathique clock and its dependent watch, the tact watch, and finally the tourbillon, patented in 1801.
Although Breguet is probably best known for his luxury watches and carriage clocks, he also made a number of important scientific clocks. In 1818 Lieutenant-General Thomas Brisbane, a keen amateur astronomer, purchased a Breguet mean-time regulator clock (No. 3180, 1815–1820). It is thought that Breguet originally made the clock for the French Commission of Longitude, but sold it to Brisbane for use in his observatory at Largs in Scotland. It cost Brisbane the considerable sum of 2,500 francs, and the fact he chose to buy French rather British, even in the nationalistic political climate of the early nineteenth century, gives some idea of how well regarded Breguet was internationally. Brisbane brought the clock to Australia in 1821 and it was installed in Australia’s first astronomical observatory at Parramatta. The New South Wales government purchased the clock from Brisbane when he returned to England in 1825 and it remained in use there until the Parramatta observatory closed in 1847. It was put into storage for a decade before being reinstalled in the new government observatory at The Rocks, and was one of the few instruments that the new Government Astronomer, Rev. W. Scott, felt was good enough to use in the new observatory. It remained in use there for another 70 years, until it was replaced in 1912. The clock is now part of the collection of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.
Timeline of Breguet’s works
- 1775–1780 Improved the automatic winding mechanism – his perpetual watch.
- 1783 Invented the gong for repeater watches (bells were used until then).
- 1783 Designed the apple-shaped (aiguilles à pomme) hands, known as ‘Breguet’ hands. These hollow, eccentric “moon” tip hands are a variant of the hands first used by Jean-Antoine Lépine, the only difference is that Lépine’s hands were not eccentric. Since their invention, Breguet hands have graced watch and clock dials alike until today.
- 1787 Adopted and improved the lever escapement. Abraham-Louis Breguet used it in its definitive form from 1814 (this form is still in use).
- 1793 Developed a small watch showing the equation of time.
- 1790 Invented the ‘pare-chute’ anti-shock device.
- 1794 Invented a retrograde display mechanism.
- 1795 Invented the Breguet spiral (flat spiral balance spring with overcoil).
- 1795 Invented the “Sympathique” (‘sympathetic’) clock, a master carriage clock which rewinds and sets to time a detachable pocket watch.
- 1799 Invented the montre a tact(“tact”) watch that could be read by feel in the pocket or the dark.
- 1801 Patented the tourbillon escapement, developed circa 1795.
- 1802 Invented the echappement naturel, a double-escape wheeled chronometer escapement that needed no oil.
- 1821 Developed the “inking” chronograph, in partnership with Frédérick Louis Fatton