What does gravity do to your timepiece?

While taking refuge in his native Switzerland during the French revolution Abraham-Louis Breguet just couldn't stop thinking about gravity's effect on a movement.

Because he’d realized that the physical pull of gravity slightly distorted the hairspring. And that it could change the friction on pivoting points, affecting the amplitude, or the length of the balance wheel swing.

And we all know where that led him. To the tourbillon.

A tourbillon is not defying the laws of gravity. It works around them. Literally. After almost a decade of pondering, Abraham-Louis Breguet arrived at the solution of putting the escapement in a rotating cage, thus counteracting the detrimental effect on precision caused by gravity. 

But to produce a tourbillon has never been easy. 225 years ago, it was even more difficult with tools that were rather primitive compared with today's. The complexity was the main reason for the approval of Breguet’s patent arriving in 1801, but it would take another six years to finish the first tourbillon pocket coming to market in 1807. In the following decades Breguet would together with his colleagues produce 40 tourbillons between 1796 and 1829 (they kept the work going after he passed away in 1826)

So, that's the history lesson. How does Breguet celebrate today’s 225-year milestone? With two very different design directions. 

Let's start with the rather colorful Breguet Tradition 7047 Fusee and chain, which has been given a great makeover. Inside its 41-mm platinum case you can see a sky-blue background, and the small palladium dial features a grand feu enamel in French blue. This royal color is also matching on the rubber strap, as well as the main bridges of the recognizable Tradition architecture which Breguet used since the late 1700s. In case you are not familiar with the designs, we are talking about the somewhat triangular-shaped bridges. To sum it up, this timepiece is a great example of the top-shelf, contemporary horology that is Breguet today: a tourbillon paired with a fusee-chain system ensuring constant torque, whatever its winding level is. 

And then there is the 7357. Inspired by Breguet’s early pocket watches as well as the first "modern" tourbillon that Breguet made in 1989, this is available in Breguet gold or Platinum. At the heart of it all ticks an upgraded caliber 588. As Gregory Kissing, CEO of Breitling said in a recent statement: "This is a historic caliber, a turning point in the contemporary history of the Tourbillon. It is entirely and solely due to this caliber that the Tourbillon made its spectacular return to the forefront of horological watchmaking. Creating a new generation of this movement was a weighty responsibility."

All I can say is that if Breguet goes this far for a “middle anniversary” like 225, I sure hope to be around for the 250!