The greatest Watchmaker in history would think we were idiots (and he would have worn a smart watch).

You see this picture of Breguet? That’s him raising an eyebrow at modern day watch enthusiasts.

Even if you don’t quite know all of his exploits you will surely have heard of the name Abraham-Louis Breguet.

Born in Switzerland in 1747, the guy was an absolute powerhouse of watch invention and design…. and he 100% would have worn a smart watch if he was around today.

Allow me to explain….

Breguet was an innovator who pushed the boundaries of science and mechanics at the time.

His most notable invention was the tourbillion, a mechanism that allows the balance wheel, balance spring and escapement to constantly rotate while the movement is running, in order to counter the effects of gravity on the mechanism.

Although this is his most famous achievement, in my opinion this was far from his most impressive.

The guy could basically drop the mic on anyone in the watch game, past AND present.

He created the ‘Touch Watch’, which allowed gentry to subtly check the time in order to avoid a social faux pas…

He created the first carriage clock (sold to Napoleon Bonaparte), the first wrist watch (given to the queen of Naples), the first repeating watch with a gong and the first balance pivots with shock protection.

But most impressive to me was when, in 1795, he created this awesome thing…

He named this The Sympathetic Clock.

With this, he had invented a mechanism by which the owner would place their pocket watch on top of the clock in the evening, and over night the watch would set itself to the correct time from its clock companion AND the watches regulator would be adjusted according to the amount of time it was noted to have lost or gained, to improve it’s accuracy for the following day.

All through clockwork!

I struggle to make a decent looking logo house, and there he is, basically creating mechanical Bluetooth for watches in the 1700’s.

Now, 250 years later, when we consider current watchmaking… do you think he would be impressed with what’s been achieved?

Bulgari has succeeded in making watches thin, Christopher Ward has made complications more accessible and the ‘holy trinity’ continue to make watches which are very beautiful and very expensive, all with the advantages of computer aided design and modern technology.

Would Breguet have expected more in 250yrs?

Absolutely.

He would have been vastly more impressed by quartz watches and especially by smart watches.

Tell him you could speak to someone hundreds of miles away through the watch on your wrist, and he would have been impressed….

…and he would certainly be asking why the hell we are wearing the same kind of mechanical watches they were running around with 250 years ago.

But watches mean something different to us than they did to Breguet.

For him they were the cutting edge of science, engineering and mathematics. They were the wonders of their time, owned by royalty and the elites.

It was about looking forward, not back.

They were futuristic, not historic.

Mechanical watches are now more about creativity within the limitations of the mechanical.

A romantic notion of a different time.

And Breguet absolutely would have worn a smart watch instead.