On 26 June 1801, or 7 Messidor, Year IX in the language of Revolutionary France, Abraham-Louis Breguet received a ten-year patent for a new type of regulator he called the tourbillon. The mechanism was his answer to one of watchmaking’s most persistent problems: gravity acting on the regulating organ of a pocket watch, carried vertically in a waistcoat pocket. His solution was to place the escapement and balance wheel inside a rotating cage, completing one full revolution per minute, so that positional errors were continually averaged rather than allowed to accumulate. Two hundred and twenty-five years later, Montres Breguet has marked the anniversary with four exceptional new watches, reconnecting the present to one of horology’s most fascinating origin stories.
Left: patent document for the tourbillon regulator granted to Abraham Louis Breguet by the French Interior Minister, 1801. © Montres Breguet.
Right: watch by John Arnold and Abraham Louis Breguet, silver-cased chronometer with tourbillon and spring-detent escapement,
London 1774 and Paris 1808 © British Museum.
The tourbillon is inseparable from Breguet, but its history also carries the trace of another great watchmaker: John Arnold, the Cornish-born chronometer pioneer whose friendship with Breguet was one of the great creative exchanges of 18th-century horology. Arnold died in 1799, before Breguet’s patent was granted. In an act of extraordinary homage, Breguet later incorporated an early tourbillon regulator into Arnold’s own pocket chronometer No. 11, work carried out between 1808 and 1809, and presented the converted piece to Arnold’s son, John Roger. Its inscription reads: “The first tourbillon regulator by Breguet incorporated in one of the first works of Arnold. Breguet’s homage to the revered memory of Arnold.” Known as Breguet No. 169, the watch now resides in the British Museum.
The 225 anniversary tourbillon models, L – R, Classique Tourbillon 7357, Classique Tourbillon Sidéral 7255, Tradition Tourbillon 7047,
and the Marine Tourbillon Équation Marchante 5887.
The four anniversary watches unveiled by Breguet on 26 June 2026 honour that legacy with characteristic depth and ambition. The collection includes the Classique Tourbillon 7357 in a boldly compact 35mm case; the Classique Tourbillon Sidéral 7255, with a flying tourbillon and mysterious display; the Tradition Tourbillon 7047, with its fusée-and-chain transmission; and the Marine Tourbillon Équation Marchante 5887, which combines a running equation of time with a celestial sky chart.
The Marine 5887 is perhaps the most emotionally resonant of the four. Its grand feu enamel dial, executed in Bleu de France, features a miniature painting of the night sky as seen from Paris on 26 June 1801, the day the patent was granted, complete with constellations, moon and hands shaped like stars and anchors. It is horology as time capsule: the sky above Breguet’s Paris immortalised on a dial.
Fixing the grand feu enamel dial, executed in Bleu de France, with the depiction of the Paris night sky
on June 26, 1801, to the Breguet Marine 5887.
The Tradition Tourbillon 7047, meanwhile, is a platinum limited edition of just 25 pieces. Its fusée-and-chain mechanism delivers constant force to the escapement, placing one of watchmaking’s oldest solutions beside one of its greatest inventions.
For watchmakers, the significance of this anniversary runs deeper than sentiment. Only 35 tourbillons were sold between 1805 and Breguet’s death in 1823, yet the mechanism has endured as an ultimate expression of horological mastery, not because it is strictly necessary in the age of the wristwatch, but because of what it demands of those who make it. Two hundred and twenty-five years on, that argument remains compelling.
Author: Andrew Hildreth
If you are a fan of Breguet, you may enjoy reading I-M Magazine’s interview with CEO Gregory Kissling; the story of the first tourbillon watch ordered by the British Royal family; and the intrigue surrounding the possible fraudulent theft of Breguet No. 2788 from the Mayer Museum.
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