BREGUET

Breguet is a Swiss manufacturer of luxury watches, founded by Abraham-Louis Breguet, his first address was at 51 Quai de l'Horloge, in Paris in 1775. Currently part of The Swatch Group, its timepieces are now (since 1976) produced in the Vallée de Joux in Switzerland. It is one of the oldest surviving watch-making establishments and is the pioneer of numerous watch-making technologies, the most notable being the tourbillon, invented by Abraham-Louis Breguet. It also produced the first wrist watch in 1810.

Breguet introduced a line of writing instruments as a tribute to writers who mention or feature Breguet watches in their works.

Breguet watches are often easily recognized for their coin-edge cases, guilloché dials and blue pomme hands (often now referred to as 'Breguet hands').

Thanks to his marriage to the daughter of a prosperous French bourgeois, her dowry provided the backing which allowed him to open his own workshop. The connections Breguet had made with scholarly people during his apprenticeship as a watchmaker and as a student of mathematics soon paid off. Following his introduction to the court, Queen Marie Antoinette grew fascinated by Breguet's unique self-winding watch; Louis XVI bought several of his watches and legend has it that Marie Antoinette commissioned the watch that was to contain every watch function known at that time - Breguet's masterpiece, the Marie Antoinette (No. 160).

Breguet had some some distinguished patrons, such as:

- Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (1782)

- Louis XVI, King of France (1783)

- Joséphine de Beuharnais, French Empress (1798)

- Napoleon Bonaparte, French Emperor (1798)

- George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales, later George IV (1803)

- Tsar Alexander I of Russia (1809)

- George III, King of England (1810)

- Louis XVIII, King of France (1821)

- Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom (1838)

- George Washington, 1st American President (1863)

- Sir Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister (1901)

- Sergei Rachmaninoff, Composer (1931)

- Ettore Arco Isidoro Bugatti, founder of the automobile company (1932) 

- Nicolas Sarkozy, French President

- Dmitry Medvedeev, Russian President

- Leo Tolstoy, Russian Author

- Victor Hugo, writer

Breguet Collections

Gentlemen's:

- Classique: Simple, Grandes Complications - popular round pieces, usually with reeded bezels and soldered lugs

- Marine: water-resistant, distinguished by the presence of crown guards.

- Heritage - tonneau-shaped cases

- Type XX,XXI - sturdy chronographs, based on World War II-era pilots' watches.

- La Tradition - similar to the long gone Souscription by Breguet, open-faced watches with the movement on the front, along with a small face

Women's: (mainly distinguished by diamonds):

- Classique

- Marine

- Heritage

- Type XX

- Reine de Naples - oval bezels

       

               Breguet Grande Complication Marie-Antoinette Number 160 - at least $10 million

Yes, $10 million for a reproduction watch. The original watch was intended for Marie-Antoinette. However, the events of the French Revolution overtook the turnover of the watch. As a matter of fact, Breguet finished it 34 years after Antoinette’s death. It got handed down to her descendants however before finally finding a place at a museum in Jerusalem. It got stolen in 1983. After Swatch bought Breguet in 1999, the company set out to have the Marie-Antoinette. He started reproducing the watch in 2005 and completed it in 2008, or 31 years faster than the original. The self-winding watch has a minute repeater, perpetual calendar, equation of time, jumping hour, reserve indicator and bimetallic thermometer. It has 823 unique pieces and a double parachute anti-shock device. Called “The Queen,” the box alone came from Royal Oak Tree of Versailles and cost $100, 000. While the watch is not for sale, Breguet has received several offers of at least $10 million.

ZENITH

Zenith SA is a high-end luxury Swiss watch manufacture started in 1865 by Georges Favre-Jacot at the age of 22, in Le Locle in the canton of Neuchatel.

Zenith has a long reputation for the quality and precision of their watches, with 1,565 1st-place precision awards to date. It is one of few remaining Swiss watch manufacturers that still produce their own movements in-house.

The El Primero calibre, which was first released in 1969, though still produced today, was one of the first automatic chronograph movements and has a frequency of 36,000 alternations per hour (5 Hz). This high rate allows a resolution of 1/10 of a second and a potential for greater positional accuracy over the more common standard frequency of 28,800 alternations per hour (4 Hz). The El Primero was honoured with a 2012 release of the El Primero Stratos Flyback Striking 10th, limited to 1,969 pieces (in honour of the original 1969 release date), that housed the same 36,000 vph movement and a sub-dial measuring in tenths of a second to make a complete rotation every ten seconds.

Zenith was purchased by LVMH Moët Hennessy • Louis Vuitton S.A. in November 1999, becoming one of several brands in their watch and jewellery division. The CEO of the company is Jean-Frédéric Dufour, formerly of Chopard.

 The new Zenith campaign is an invitation to escape from routine. Featuring free, wide-open spaces, each seeming to reveal a mechanical or aesthetic detail, it vividly testifies that, for Zenith, excellence sparks daring. It pays tribute to the reaffirmed brand values: the authenticity of its watchmaking expertise; the bold daring of its enterprising spirit; and the unique pleasure of the timepieces it makes.

The admirable complexity of the movements and the aesthetic appeal of its watches are revealed within scenery imbued with a sense of freedom. The images selected for the new press advertising campaign evoke dreams, emotions, sustainability, creativity, freedom, aestheticism and independence. They convey both the brand’s history and its current news. Inspired by the daring that has always been part of the soul of the Manufacture, they hint that there are still many conquests to make, horizons to be explored and dreams to be fulfilled.

Iconic calibres and new complications further pushing the boundaries of watchmaking expertise stem from a visionary spirit that has remained intact. Zenith presents itself as a companion of all those wishing to make their dreams come true. Its timepieces will be the alter egos of those who have chosen to follow their own star.

                                           El Primero Chronomaster 1969

IWC SCHAFFHAUSEN

With its passion for innovation and technical inventiveness, IWCSchaffhausen has established an international reputation. Since 1868, the Swiss watch manufacturers have been creating masterpieces of haute horlogerie that combine precision engineering with exclusive design.

International Watch Co, also known as IWC, is a high-end Swiss watch manufacturer located in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. IWC is an active member of the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry FH.

IWC Schaffhausen is notable for being the only major Swiss watch factory located in eastern Switzerland, as the majority of the well-known Swiss watch manufacturers are located in western Switzerland.

IWC's motto is Probus Scafusia (L.), meaning "good, solid craftsmanship from Schaffhausen" and was established in 1903 as the "Official Motto"

In 1868, an American engineer and watchmaker Florentine Ariosto Jones (1841–1916) who had been a director of E. Howard & Co., in Boston, then America's leading watchmaking company, founded the International Watch Company with the intention of combining the craftsmanship of the Swiss with the modern engineering technology from the U.S. to manufacture movements and watch parts for the American market." At the time, wages in Switzerland were relatively low although there was a ready supply of skilled watchmaking labor" mainly carried out by people in their homes. Jones encountered opposition to his plans in French-speaking Switzerland because people feared for their jobs" and the work they did at home because Jones wanted to open a factory.

In 1850 the town of Schaffhausen was in danger of being left behind in the Industrial Age. It was at this stage that watch manufacturer and industrialist Johann Heinrich Moser stepped in and did the region a huge service. As a pioneer of hydropower, he built Schaffhausen's first hydroelectric plant and laid the cornerstone for future industrialization." He probably met F.A. Jones in Le Locle and showed great interest in his plans. Together, they laid the foundations for the only watch manufacturers in north-eastern Switzerland: The International Watch Company in Schaffhausen.

Johann-Rauschenbach-Vogel, Chief Executive Officer and a machine manufacturer from Schaffhausen, took over the INTERNATIONALE UHRENFABRIK on 17 February 1880. Four generations of the Rauschenbach family owned IWC, with varying names.

After the death of J. Rauschenbach-Schenk in 1905, his wife, two daughters and their husbands, Ernst Jakob Homberger (director of G. Fischer AG in Schaffhausen) and Dr.Carl Jung (psychologist and psychiatrist), took over the watch factory as an open trading company by the name of the UHRENFABRIK VON J. RAUSCHENBACH'S ERBEN. E.J. Homberger was the only authorized signatory, Haenggi and Vogel were directors.

On April 1, 1944, as a result of a fatal error, Schaffhausen was bombed by the United States Army Air Forces. The watch factory was hit by a bomb which failed to detonate after crashing through the rafters. The flames from incendiaries exploding nearby penetrated the building through the broken windows but were extinguished by the company's own fire brigade.

After World War II, IWC was forced to change its focus. All of Eastern Europe had fallen under the Iron Curtain, and the economy of Germany was in shambles. As a result, old contacts and connections with other countries in Europe and the Americas as well as Australia and the Far East were revived and intensified or established.

In the 1970s and 80s, the Swiss watchmaking industry underwent a phase of far-reaching technological change. Following in the wake of the use of miniaturized electric batteries as a source of energy for wristwatches from the late 1940s onwards and the invention of the transistor in 1947, purely mechanical watch technology developed into a hybrid discipline of precision mechanics and electronics.

IWC managed to avoid investing heavily in expensive and eventually unsuccessful technologies, such as the electronically controlled balance. The UHRENFABRIK H. E. HOMBERGER co-founded and was a shareholder in the "Centre Electronique Horloger" (CEH) in Neuchatel and was financially involved in the development of the Beta 21 quartz wristwatch movement, which was first presented to the public at the 1969 Industrial Fair in Basel. In actual value terms, this movement accounted for about 5-6% of total sales of quartz watches. Parallel to this, the company expanded its collection of jeweler watches to include ladies watches with mechanical movements. The year 1973 was IWC's most successful of the post-war period.

The cataclysmic rise in gold prices in 1974 had grave consequences for the watch exporting industry. Between 1970 and 1974 the price of gold rose from 4850 to 18 000 francs and the value of the dollar against the Swiss currency plummeted by up to 40%. As a result, the price of watch exports rose by as much as 250%. At the same time Japan was flooding the market with cheap quartz watches.

In 1991 IWC director Günter Blümlein founded the LMH Group with its headquarters in Schaffhausen. With a 100% stake in IWC, 60% in Jaeger-LeCoultre and 90% in the Saxony-based watchmaking company of A. Lange & Söhne, the Group employed some 1440 persons.

In July 2000, LMH was acquired by Richemont, a Zug-based luxury goods group, for CHF 2.8 bn. Despite the takeover by Richemont, IWC was guaranteed that it would continue to be managed by the same executives from the LMH Group.

In the year 2001 IWC went online with the Collectors Forum.

The company began keeping detailed records for every watch that has left the factory since 1885. Since 1885, details of the caliber, materials used and cases have been entered into the records. In the case of later models, these also include the reference number, delivery date and the name of the authorized dealer. For a small fee, the owner can obtain precise information about their watch, as long as the watch is at least ten years old.

The company claims that its service department has the parts and is capable of repairing and maintaining watches from every era since IWC's foundation in 1868."

Since 1997, IWC has been offering a unique horological item for on-line auction annually on its website. The proceeds are donated to the Ecole des Sables – Antoine de Saint Exupéry school in Mali. The school provides education for Tuareg children.

In 2007, the Company auctioned a platinum version of the Pilot's Watch Automatic Edition Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Reference 3201. The watch was made as a tribute to the French author and aviation pioneer. It was auctioned together with an original copy of Exupery's debut novel, Courrier Sud (Southern Mail), featuring a handwritten dedication by the author. In 2009 IWC introduced the Big Pilot edition Antoine de Saint Exupéry in 1900 pieces. Only one of them will be in platinum and will be auctioned for charity.

Four times a year, IWC publishes a customer magazine titled, Watch International. This publication is available in German, French and English, and includes stories, articles and features about IWC.

He once was something like a poster boy for the 1980s, flaunting a highly styled hairdo, leather pants and oversized, beige-colored sports jackets.

A questionable look, to be sure – even if, at the time, he already seemed way cooler than most of his fellow actors. Luckily, there’s nothing left of this today. Au contraire: Patrick Dempsey has blossomed since then as Dr. Derek Shepherd aka “McDreamy,” the much-adored character from the TV series “Grey’s Anatomy.” A lady’s dream guy, the perfect example of the type of man that has the nerve to become more and more attractive as he ages.