The Greatest Watchman

There’s a bit of Breguet in every one of our watches

- Celine Yap

On 26 June 1801, Abraham-Louis Breguet made history when he was finally granted a patent for the tourbillon regulator. This was the device that solved the problem wrought on the balance spring by the pocket watch’s number one enemy: gravity. Today, the tourbillon is not only synonymous with Breguet, it is also a symbol of high watchmaking.

Yet this much-celebrated invention wasn’t his only important contribution to watchmaking. Far from it. Before the tourbillon, Breguet, sometimes with his associates, conceived and patented a staggering number of technical solutions, all of which vastly improved the quality and performance of mechanical timepieces. Many of them – if not most – are still in use today. More impressively, they are practically unchanged, thus attesting to the fundamental superiority of those mechanisms.

Automatic Intelligence

Breguet’s earliest major achievement came in 1780 with the creation of the self-winding perpétuelle watch. At that time, all watches were either wound with a key or the crown. His system was revolutionary but more importantly it worked really well. The movement had a sprung-oscillating weight in platinum that moved up and down, returning to its original position each time after it moved, winding the mainspring in the process.

That monumental creation was sold to the Duc d’Orléans. Then, word spread among the European royal courts of this amazing perpétuelle watch that “needs no winding.” King Louis XVI of France was known to have commissioned numerous timepieces. In all, Breguet made between 80 to 90 perpétuelle watches from 1780 to when he passed away in 1823.