Breguet (watch)

Breguet SA

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Luxury watchmaking
Founded	1775
Founder	Abraham-Louis Breguet
Headquarters	Vallée de Joux, Switzerland
Key people	Abraham-Louis Breguet
Parent	The Swatch Group
Website	breguet.ch

Breguet is a Swiss manufacturer of luxury watches, founded by Abraham-Louis Breguet in Paris in 1775. Currently part of The Swatch Group, its timepieces are now (since 1976) produced in the Vallée de Joux in Switzerland.

The company, along with Vacheron Constantin, is one of the oldest surviving watch-making establishments and a pioneer of numerous watch-making technologies, such as the tourbillon, invented by Abraham-Louis Breguet. It also produced the first wrist watch in 1810.

Breguet watches are often easily recognized for their coin-edge cases, guilloché dials and blue pomme hands (often now referred to as 'Breguet hands').

In addition to watches, Breguet also manufactures writing instruments, women's jewelry, and cufflinks.

Breguet was founded in 1775 by Abraham-Louis Breguet, a Swiss watchmaker born to Huguenot parents in Neuchâtel. He studied watchmaking for 10 years under Ferdinand Berthoud and Jean-Antoine Lépine before setting up his own watchmaking business in Paris at 51 Quai de l'Horloge on the Île de la Cité in Paris. The dowry that came with his marriage to the daughter of a prosperous French bourgeois provided the backing which allowed him to open his own workshop. Breguet's connections made during his apprenticeship as a watchmaker and as a student of mathematics helped him to establish his business. Following his introduction to the court, Queen Marie Antoinette grew fascinated by Breguet's unique self-winding watch; Louis XVI bought several of his watches. In 1783 the Swedish count, Axel Von Fersen, who was the queen's friend and reputed lover, commissioned a watch from Breguet that was to contain every watch complication known at that time as a gift to Marie Antoinette, – Breguet's masterpiece, the Marie Antoinette (No. 160).

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