When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way - before one began." -- Friedrich Nietzsche In the more than five centuries of watchmaking history, there is one watchmaker whose renown exceeds all others, whose influence remains omnipresent. While we must credit John Harrison with what is likely the greatest historical significance to the science of horology, no where did the high art and craft of watch and clock making receive greater advancement than in the hands of Abraham-Louis Breguet. If Harrison is our Galileo, then Breguet is our Leonardo. Unlike the work of Harrison which ended with his death in 1776, the legacy of AL Breguet's watchmaking was handed down and continued by subsequent generations. The house of Breguet has operated continuously since 1775, excepting perhaps only the short period of AL Breguet's self-exile during the Terror (1793-5). In the decades after his death in 1823, Breguet et Fils became more of an engineering firm than a watchmaking concern, as the scions of the Breguet line sought exploits in other, newer technologies. Due to their success, the small watchmaking element of the company was spun off in 1870, sold to the English watchmaker that headed the boutique watchmaking operation. Under Edward Brown and his descendants, Breguet remained a Parisian boutique for the next century, producing only a few hundred watches per year. During the era of grande complication pocket watches and observatory competitions, it utilized the famed ateliers in the Valle de Joux just like the elite brands of Geneva and Saxony. As the age of wristwatches dawned, Breguet followed fellow Parisian Cartier into the new mode. The aesthetic of Breguet-branded pocket watches and wristwatches evolved with the times, and were rarely distinguishable from their contemporaries, other than for the unique pieces made-to-order for special clients. On the threshold of the quartz revolution in 1970, the Brown family sold the Breguet boutique to the now infamous Chaumet brothers. These Parisian jewelers attempted to re-expand the Breguet brand, and revive the signature aesthetic which we now think of as the "Breguet look." While it largely continued to rely on etablissage, Breguet SA also opened its own atelier in Le Brassus in 1976 as part of its expansion. Production was increased, but the company lost money every year. Alas, the Chaumets went bankrupt in 1987, and the Republic of France sold its patrimony to the international investment firm Investcorp. Nouvelle Lemania and Valdar were also acquired a few years later (1991) and united into a "Groupe Horloger Breguet." At the time Nouvelle Lemania only supplied Montres Breguet with 9% of its movements - just the high horology repeaters, tourbillons, etc., while the majority were provided by Jaeger-LeCoultre and Frederic Piguet. Nouvelle Lemania was itself losing money and this was generally deemed a poor acquisition by the industry. The Breguet atelier was transferred to L'Abbaye in 1994, as production expanded to nearly 5,000 watches a year (1995). Montres Breguet began to use Nouvelle Lemania's lesser legacy movements as well, transferring watchmakers and additional watch production to Lemania beginning in 1997, thereby increasing its workforce nearly 50%. By that time watch production was at a new high of 6,000 per annum, but the company was still losing money, and retailers were dumping watches far below their inflated list prices. After more than ten years of heavy investment and profitless growth, Investcorp finally extracted a profit from the Breguet Group when it was sold to the Swatch Group in 1999. There Montres Breguet would become steel to be forged, to spearhead Swatch's planned conquest of the exclusive world of haute horlogerie, to become the Swatch Group's crown jewel and the world leader of haut couture watchmaking.