Abraham-Louis Breguet is a celebrated watchmaker and clockmaker born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland but master in France. Historians considered him as one of the important horologist of all time. His technical expertise in clock-making was outstanding and many brilliant innovations in this field were attributed to him.
It was when he was still at the age of 15 when he started honing his skill. Breguet was a family with a long and rich history in clock-making, Abraham Louis’ already in-born talent in horology was polished under the apprenticeship of a Versailles watchmaker. And in 1775 he moved to Paris to build the now famous House of Breguet.
His first major contribution to the field of horology was as a watchmaker through the automatic rotor or perpetuelle watch in 1780. It consisted of two going barrels and an oscillating weight that self-wind back allowing it to run in years without going slow.
During the early course of his career he focused on the development of watch. Years followed with the invention of gong spring, adoption and improvement of different escapement methods, and guilloche dials.
But since most of the watches then come in set, meaning it comes together with a clock, it never took that long for the brilliant mind that Breguet was to mark a contribution to the development of clock-making.
It was in 1975 when he invented the sympathique clock. Others refer to it as perpetual calendar; it housed a sympathetic pendulum which resets in a special clock though pendulum mechanism.
His most famous invention was the tourbillon that made the whole watch mechanism to reset to compensate for errors. Now, this is the most sought after piece of collectors --- the Breguet turbillon.
Other highly regarded inventions and innovations are the anti-shock device, retrograde display mechanism, the touch recognizable tact watch, overcoil balance spring, so many more. This constant progress to horology earned him a lot of recognition and admission to different elite societies.
He became a Master Clockmaker in 1784, a member of Bureau des Longitudes in 1814, in 1815 as the official watchmaker for the Royal Navy, and in the succeeding year as a member of the Academy of Science. He also earned the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1819.
Since he focused on watches, Burguet antique clocks are really hard to find. He is famous though for the carriage clocks which is said to believe that he invented.
These special antique French clocks can be viewed in all four sides which add to its aesthetic appeal. Compare to mantle clocks, carriage clocks are portable and generally lightweight.
Some of these antique French clocks were sold to prominent people like the Pendule de voyage to Colonel Cook and an Empire ormolu carriage clock Lord Gower.
Though he was also gifted with talent in designing, he still worked with different artisans for some of his clocks. He had some collaboration with Parisian silversmith Louis Legay and bronze caster Nicolas DelaFontaine dit Le Jeune and Pierre-Philippe Thomire for Pendule Pyramidale and Muses.