Breguet
Abraham-Louis Bréguet (1747 – 1823) was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland. He left Switzerland for Paris and a watchmaking apprenticeship when he was still a teenager. He opened his own workshop at 28 years old in the Ile de la Cité in Paris with the help of his mentor Abbot Joseph-François Marie who introduced Bréguet to the French Court. Before long he was providing timepieces to such clients such as Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, Napoleon I and even the French Navy. He was creating perpetual calendars, chronometers and automatica. He was forced to flee the revolution unfortunately but returned in 1795 and re-established himself and his business. He saw the value in his foreign clientele and opened a location in St. Petersburg in 1808. Tsar Alexander ceased to allow the entry of French goods into Russia in response to the politics of Napoleon and Breguet was forced to close his shop. Antoine-Louis Bréguet, Abrahams son assumed leadership of the company in 1824 and continued his fathers work. His son Louis-Clément succeeded his father and grandfather and decided to diversify the business to include other areas of scientific instrumentation. Then in 1870 he made the decision to sell to the head of the workshop Edward Brown. Brown was aware of the historical importance of the firm he had acquired and three generations of his family would safeguard the Bréguet name and reputation over the following century. In 1970 the Chaumet brothers bought the business and in 1999 it was taken over by the Swatch Group.
