Marine Tourbillon Équation Marchante 5887

1801–2026: 225 years since the invention of the Tourbillon

Breguet celebrates the Tourbillon legacy with a number of exclusive creations

In 2026, Breguet pays tribute to the invention of the Tourbillon, for which Abraham-Louis Breguet was granted his historic patent on 7 Messidor Year 9 according to the French revolutionary calendar, corresponding to 26 June 1801. This means that this eminent complication has been an enduring part of day-to-day life for the Manufacture Breguet, its collectors and the entire watch industry – which has since widely adopted its founding principle – for exactly 225 years.

Since then, the Manufacture has continued to foster the progress of the great watchmaker’s invention, constantly drawing on its original inspiration, while over the decades introducing valuable technical refinements serving a single purpose: the quest for precision. All the new models presented today are part of this vision.

An invention at the heart of history

1793: the turmoil of the French Revolution eventually convinced Breguet to leave his workshop on the Quai de l’Horloge and enjoy a much-needed escape with his family. In Neuchâtel and subsequently in Le Locle, the watchmaker took advantage of this respite to revisit some of his creative visions and contemplate the future of his company.

Upon his return to Paris in 1795, Breguet unveiled a number of inventions that would prove decisive not only for his own future, but also for that of horology as a whole: the sympathique clock (a clock that sets the time of a pocket watch that is placed on top of it), the souscription watch (whose minimalist design redefined the aesthetic codes of watchmaking, and which the House of Breguet reinterpreted in 2025), along with the à tact watch (serving to read the time by touch), among many others.

A.-L. Breguet developed two new mechanisms: firstly, the constant-force escapement, patented in 1798 and secondly, a Tourbillon regulator device patented three years later in 1801. It is the latter that we are now celebrating on its 225th anniversary.

Origins of a watchmaking revolution

The Tourbillon regulator, or Tourbillon, is based on the observation that the oscillation of certain watch components – and more critically the balance and balance-spring – is “pulled” downwards by the force of gravity. The regulation organ’s operation is thus affected, and indeed unevenly so, when the watch is held vertically – which was almost always the case for a pocket watch in Breguet’s day.

To resolve this difficulty, Breguet was naturally aware that he could not defy the laws of gravity. In a sense, he therefore circumvented the problem by inventing a system based around a cage (also known as a cage) in which the escapement and the regulating mechanisms (balance and balance-spring) are enclosed and kept in constant rotation around an axis, in all positions. The balance-and-spring assembly’s centre of gravity is thus continually realigned with the axis of rotation, compensating for the adverse effects of the uneven oscillation of a watch held in a static position. Breguet designed this system to “mix up” all vertical positions and ultimately achieve higher average accuracy.

If we consider that the Tourbillon took shape in Breguet’s mind between 1793 and 1795 (during  his  stay  in  Switzerland),  six  years elapsed between his return to Paris and the granting of the patent on 26 June 1801 – and a further six years would pass between the official approval of this patent and the first sales.

Breguet and his employees went on to produce 40 Tourbillons between 1796 and 1829, along with nine other such timepieces that were never completed and are recorded in the accounts as written off, scrapped or lost.

Since then, the Manufacture has never ceased striving to perfect this mechanism – one of the trickiest and most complex in the realm of Haute Horlogerie – in order to open up new chronometric horizons. With this in mind, the House continues to develop new watchmaking processes (high frequency) and also ventures to explore other disciplines with a view to enriching the Tourbillon with the latest scientific breakthroughs (such as the constant-force magnetic escapement).