Montres Breguet

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Montres Breguet SA

logo
legal form Corporation
founding 1775
Seat L'Abbaye , Switzerland
management Marc A. Hayek
( CEO )
Nayla Hayek
( Chairman of the Board )
Branch Watch manufacturer
Website www.breguet.com

The watch manufacturer Montres Breguet was founded in 1775 by the watchmaker Abraham Louis Breguet and was based in Paris for a long time . Today the company is based in L'Abbaye , Switzerland and is part of the Swatch Group .

history

In 1780, shortly after Abraham-Louis Perrelet and Hubert Sarton , Breguet manufactured his first clocks with an automatic winding mechanism using a flywheel . The first pocket watches with an integrated gong (for the acoustic time display) were built by Breguet in 1783 . In 1790 , the manufacture attracted attention with the “pare-chute”, a forerunner of shock protection . Breguet received a patent for the invention of the tourbillon from the French Ministry of the Interior in 1801 . With the first real wristwatch , which was built between 1810 and 1812, Breguet was a pioneer of the modern watch as a constant companion.

Since Breguet's watches became world famous, counterfeits bearing his name soon appeared. Therefore, in 1795, Breguet began to apply a secret signature to the dials of his watches. The so-called Breguet spiral became very well known among experts . It is a specially shaped hairspring of the balance , in which the last spiral wrap is, thanks to two knee-shaped bends, slightly above the hairspring, which allows the hairspring to "breathe" concentrically.

Montres Breguet watch

Breguet watches represent top technical products in the top price segment. The moon phase calendar of the "Classique" model is valid for 1050 years, the watch consists of approx. 2500 individual parts and costs (as of 2012) approx. € 300,000.

The manufacture remained family-owned until 1870, when it was taken over by the workshop boss at the time, Edward Brown. Edward Brown's family sold Breguet to the jeweler Chaumet in 1970 . In 1987 Breguet became the property of the London-based finance company Investcorp . Groupe Breguet was founded under Investcorp , to which the companies Montres Breguet SA , Montres Jaquet-Droz SA , Valdar SA and Nouvelle Lemania SA belonged. In 1999, Breguet was taken over by the Swatch Group .

At the time of the takeover, Breguet was selling around 4,000 watches a year with annual sales of around 40 million Swiss francs. In 2006 the number of watches sold rose to 22,000 a year with a turnover of 400 million Swiss francs . When building the watch movements, Breguet also uses parts made of silicon , e.g. B. Balance springs, a.

Historically important buyers of Breguet watches

Breguet wristwatch

reference

literature

  • Breguet SA (Ed.): Breguet today. Paris 1986.
  • Osvaldo Patrizzi, Madeleine Patrizzi, Jean-Claude Sabrier: Breguet. Masterpieces of classic watchmaking. Callwey, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-7667-1016-8 .
  • Emmanuel Brequet: Breguet. Watchmakers Since 1775. The Life and Legacy of Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823). Alain de Gourcuff, Paris 1997, ISBN 2-909838-18-8 .
  • Joe Thompson: Back to the Top, Chronos 2007, Volume 4, p. 31

Web links

Commons : Breguet  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 360 ° GEO report - The secret of Swiss watches. Arte 1/2012 (among others)
  2. ^ Breguet: Silicon for Everyone.Retrieved August 26, 2012.
  3. ^ Antiquorum: The Art of Breguet. An Important Collection of 204 Watches, Clocks and Wristwatches . Geneva 1991.