Breguet watches
Breguet was founded in 1775 by Abraham-Louis Breguet, following his marriage to the daughter of a prosperous French bourgeois; her dowry provided the "financing" 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 with spectacular results. Following his introduction to the court,whereupon Queen Marie-Antoinette is said to have grown fascinated by Breguet's unique self-winding watch, Louis XVI bought several watches. He gave one of them to the mariner Bougainville, who was just organizing his great expedition to the North Pole.
Two requirements for the further development of the workshop had been achieved: Breguet found access to the powerful and wealthy aristocracy, and proved himself to be a technical genius. In short order, Breguet perfected the self-winding movement invented by Perrelet; invented shock resistance for balance bearings (prior to this, most pocket watches were badly damaged if they fell to the ground); and developed la repetition, a repeating pocket watch that chimed on demand (which was necessary to tell time in the dark).
Perhaps the invention Breguet is most famous for is the tourbillon. Even with today's advanced technology, the tourbillon can only be built by the most skilled watchmakers. Breguet began with the theory that the gravity of a pocket watch that was almost always carried vertically led to deviations in timekeeping. He wanted to rule out all differences of position with the tourbillon.
Consequently, he developed a small "clock within a clock", meaning that the balance and escapement turned on a common axle within the movement, for example, once a minute. This eliminated most deviations caused by differences in position and allowed many watches to attain chronometer-like accuracy. These inventions of Breguet ensured the success of his firm under the rule of two Bourbon kings, three governments of the First Republic, and the reign of Napoleon. In fact, Napoleon was one of Breguet's most loyal customers.