This is one of the earliest French watches to employ the lever escapement. Although Mudge invented the lever escapement in 1770, he kept it a secret for 12 years. In 1782 Emery made his first lever watch based on the Mudge escapement. Surviving Breguet registers confirm that the so-called "Second Series" began with 31 "perpetuelle" watches with lever escapement. However, the escapement differs considerably from the one found on this watch, which bears an almost exact resemblance to the Pendleton lever escapement. Pendleton is known to have made all of Emery?s lever escapement watches. The present escapement shows the extent to which Breguet was influenced by Pendleton?s lever escapement, for the two have many close similarites. The watch has a very unusual layout with eccentric back plate ? a feature which, if not unique in Breguet?s work, is still very rare. A similar movement design was also used by Breguet for the early "souscription" watches. Furthermore, the watch features one of the earliest applications of the Breguet jump-hour mechanism, which in later years he applied to most of his best timekeepers. In addition to this, we must mention the simple device preventing backlash. The layout of this movement, which eliminates the center wheel, results in the minutes hand being driven indirectly by the first wheel. This results in too much play (backlash), which can cause an error in the minutes indication, of up to half a minute. In the present watch, Breguet solved the problem of backlash by applying constant pressure onto the canon pinion, which is not friction-fit. The present watch is very well documented in the history of horology. George Daniels illustrates it in his "The Art of Breguet" on p. 149 and writes about it on pp. 10 and 61. The watch is also mentioned in "Watches" by Cecil Clutton and George Daniels, New York, 1965, p. 49, in "The Art of Watchmaking" by George Daniels, pp. 61, 102, 149, 308, 309, and in "Collector?s Collection", p. 58.