1.29.2010


Léon Breitling
1860 • Birth of Leon Breitling.

1884 • First Leon Breitling chronographs and meters for automobiles made at St-IMIER



MONTBRILLANT WATCH FACTORY
1892 • The young captain of industry created the watch factory G LEON BREITLING SA, MONTBRILLIANT WATCHFACTORY at LA CHAUX DE FONDS

1914 • Gaston Breitling joined the family firm. Death of his father LEON.

Gaston Breitling inherited a passion for chronographs and systematically worked to make the family firm a success story.
A special model, patented with the name VITESSE, was a huge success with the police: it enabled them to time drivers breaking the speed limit.
Moving with the fashion, BREITLING accelerated the development and production of wristwatches with chronograph functions.

1932 • Willy Breitling, the son of Gaston Breitling, became head of the business.

1936 • BREITLING launched a chronograph for aircraft cockpits.

1942 • Launch of the CHRONOMAT BREITLING, the first watch chronograph equipped with log scale calculator.

1952Launch of the BREITLING NAVITIMER with optimised calculator function.





1962 • Launch of the COSMONAUT, with a 24hour rather than 12 hour single circuit of the dial.
BREITLING chronograph (Cosmonaut) goes into space; worn by astronaut Scott Carpenter on board the AURORA 7 capsule.

1969 • The brand that used, above all, VENUS ebauches in its mechanical hand-wound models, was one of the pioneers of the automatic chronograph developed in collaboration with HEUER-LEONIDAS and HAMILTON-BÜREN. With a combined DUBOIS-DEPRAZ chronograph module, they created the micro-rotor Chronomat.





1979 • BREITLING closed. Ernest Schneider, from SICURA, took over the firm and registered it under the name MONTRES BREITLING S.A. in GRANGES.

1983 • Creation of the GMT NAVITIMER. Launch of Eric Tabarly products.

1985 • the END OF LIFE system for divers was created (3300 feet/1000 meters).
Launch of the NAVITIMER CHRONOMAT model.

1987 • Launch of the WORLD model with indicator for 4 time zones.

1988 • Launch of the J-CLASS model specially developed for yachting.









1999 Certification and Control for chronometry norms.
BREITLING backed the project of the Swiss and British team, Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones, who completed the first non-stop round the world trip by hot air balloon, landing on March 21st after a flight lasting 20 days.




2003 • At the International Automobile Salon in Geneva, BREITLING presented two new models, I association with BENTLEY.

BREITLING was BENTLEY’S partner at the Le Mans 24hr. race.

Limited edition 1903 MONTBRILLANT NAVITIMER.

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