A braham-Louis Breguet was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, on 10 January 1747. His family were protestants, although it has never been clearly established whether they were in fact refugees from France following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, or long-standing citizens of Neuchatel where the Breguet Breguet name is recorded as far back as the 15th Century. Neverthless, it was France that was to become his adopted country and the base for his future success. Breguet was only elevenyears of age when his father died, but his mother almost immediately became remarried to her husband's cousin, a certain Joseph Tattet, whose family were watchmakers with a sales office in Paris. Tattet took Breguet to Paris in 1762, and the young man became apprenticed to a watchmaker at Versailles, although the name of his master is unknown. After completing his apprenticeship he may well have worked for Ferdinand Berthoud or Jean-Antoine Lepine, but he certainly studied mathematics at the Colège Mazarin under the Abbé Marie. It was Marie, in his capacity as tutor to the children of the Comte d’Ar- tois, who was to provide Breguet with his first introduction to the aristocratic and wealthy families later to become his clientele. In 1775 Breguet married Cécile Marie-Louise L'Huillier; her dowry undoubtedly providing much of the capital required to establish a business. She was the daughter of an established Parisian bourgeois family, her brother in fact becoming first a steward to theMarquis du Breuil and later business agent for the Comte d'Artois. Renting part of the house at No. 39, Quai de l'Horloge, in the Ile de la Cité, from the Duchess de Polignac, Abraham-Louis opened his own business that same year, in 1775.Evidently, the contacts he had established through Abbé Marie were of almost immediate benefit, for he supplied a sophisticated self-winding watch to the Duc d'Orléans in 1780, and another to Marie-Antoinette in 1782. It would appear that Breguet worked largelyn his own for the next four or five years, as very few completed watches survived from the period. However in 1787, he arranged a partnership with Xavier Gide, an established dealer in clocks and watches, for the purpose of introducing additional capital into the business. Although not a lasting success - the partnership was dissolved in 1791, probably due to the character differences between the two men - the great surviving legacy from the arrangement was to be the records kept by the firm, beun in the year of their association and continued uninterrupted to the present day. The growing storm surrounding the French revolution was to disrupt Breguet's life in Paris, while at the same time heralding the period of his greatest achievement. Initially a Jacobin, he was unable to escape the consequences of his association with the aristocracy. His son Antoine-Louis, sent to England to study watchmaking under John Arnold, wrote home in August 1792, expressing his fears for his father's safey and strongly urging him to "leave those damned Jacobins." In fact Abraham-Louis left Paris in August 1793, traveling to Geneva on a safe-conduct pass, apparently arranged by his close friend Marat. According to family tradition, Breguet had saved Marat's life on a previous occasion, dressing him up as an old woman to escape from a house besieged by an angry crowd. It is certain, in any case, that the two men were friends: Marat's sister Albertine made watch hands for Breguet. Although the busiess in Paris suffered drastically from the master's absence - the premises and tools being confiscated - Breguet's forced exile in Switzerland was not unproductive. He employed his time there to strengthen his contacts with watchmakers throughout his native country, and to develop, at least in his mind, a vast range of ideas that were to re-launch the firm upon his return to Paris in 1795. A flurry of activity accompanied his arrival, and many of his important inventions and most exceptional cretions can be dated to the years immediately following the return. Although certain of his former clients amongst the aristocracy had been dispos- sessed or executed, other clients quickly replaced them, among them the Generals, politicians and families which had risen to prominence under Napoleon. Breguet took his son into full partnership, the commercial aspects of the business being looked after by Breguet's sister-in-law Suzanne l'Huillier, his wife had died long before, in 1780. If anything,the wars in Europe served only to strengthen the business; diplomats, ambassadors and aristocrats travelled regularly to Paris, partic- ularly from the countries ruled by Imperial France, and a network of agents represented the firm everywhere : Constantinople, Moscow, London, and Madrid. During the last ten years of Abraham-Louis' life, his business was to reach the highest point of its commercial success, with the assets valued at some Fr. 800,000 in 1823, of which Fr. 450,000 was listed as wok in progress. He was himself to be rewarded for his achievements; already created "Horloger de la Marine" by Louis XVIII, he became a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, member of the French Board of Longitude and in 1816 elected to the Académie Royale des Sciences. Abraham-Louis Breguet died rather suddenly on 17 September 1823. Although he had been widely praised both by his clients and his contemporaries, it has been left to history to make a judgement of his achievements. It is probably no exggeration to say that he was the greatest horologist of all time, a man with an unique combination of abilities, who revolutionized the technique, design and image of his chosen field.