Breguet watch history
The history of horology in the 18th century would not be complete without the probably greatest genius of watchmaking that ever lived, Abraham Louis Breguet.
Among his numerous inventions, the best-known are the Breguet spiral, found until today in every quality watch and wristwatch, and the tourbillon, the whirlwind - an ingenious device that Breguet invented to compensate for gravity influences on the balance spring in pocket watches. Among his other inventions were a new striking mechanism for repeaters, a new escapement, the so-called echappement naturel, similar to the chronometer escapement (1789), in 1790, the parachute shock protection system, the cylinder escapement with a ruby cylinder, and improvements of Perrelet's automatic winding mechanism, implemented in his around forty Perpetuelles.
Furthermore, Breguet made what we consider today as the first Grande Complication in the history of horology, the watch known as the Marie-Antoinette. This watch was commissioned by the French queen's guard Monsieur de la Croizette with the explicit order that it should contain all known complications and the greatest possible number of parts made of gold. There were no restrictions as to the time for making the watch or the price. This watch was only finished in 1827 which means that neither the unfortunate queen (Marie-Antoinette was guillotined in 1793) nor the master watchmaker himself (Breguet died in 1823) ever saw the completed watch. The Marie-Antoinette was a self-winding watch with a perpetual calendar, equation of time indication and a minute repeater. It has disappeared since 1983 when it was stolen from the Jerusalem Institute of Islamic Art.
Breguet was not only a gifted watchmaker, but also a clever businessman. He invented a payment scheme for a special series of watches which are known as the montres a souscription. These watches had a symmetrically built Lepine caliber, a ruby cylinder escapement, a temperature-compensated balance and the above mentioned shock protection for the balance-staff. They had only one hand, but reading the time is no problem thanks to the finely detailed dial. These subscription watches were made in small series of twelve to twenty at a time; customers had to make a down-payment when ordering a watch which allowed Breguet to finance production of the whole series. About 1500 of these Souscriptions were made; today, they are the least expensive Breguet watches due to this relatively large number - if you are lucky, you may find one for less than twenty thousand dollars ...
