Breitling

Breitling was born in 1884 in Saint-Imier, in the Swiss Jura, when twenty-four-year-old Léon Breitling opened a small workshop specialized in chronographs and time counters for sporting, scientific and industrial use. In 1892 the business moved to La Chaux-de-Fonds, the heart of Swiss watchmaking, where the manufacture consolidated its vocation for precision instruments designed to measure time under professional conditions, well beyond simple wrist use. It was Léon's descendants who wrote the following chapters: in 1915 his son Gaston patented the first chronograph pushpiece independent from the crown, and in 1933-34 his grandson Willy Breitling perfected the modern chronograph by introducing the second pushpiece for resetting the hands, a technical solution that would become the standard for the entire industry.

The bond with aviation, an identity trait of the brand still today, was consolidated in 1936 when Breitling began supplying onboard chronographs for aircraft cockpits, and in 1937 with the founding of the Huit Aviation Department division, dedicated exclusively to instrumentation for civil and military aeronautics. During the Second World War the company became a key supplier to the British Royal Air Force, while in the postwar period the relationship with pilots strengthened further: in 1952 the Navitimer was born at the direct request of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the international association of private pilots, fitted with a circular slide-rule bezel to perform flight calculations directly on the wrist.

In the following years Breitling went through alternating phases — from the quartz crisis, which in 1979 temporarily led to the closure of historic production, to the rebirth driven by Ernest Schneider in the 1980s, up to the most recent turning point under the leadership of Georges Kern since 2017, who repositioned the brand with a more contemporary language while maintaining COSC chronometer certification on nearly all mechanical movements, a distinctive trait claimed since the historic motto "Instruments for Professionals". Today the headquarters is in Grenchen, and the catalogue covers in parallel the fields of aviation, the sea and motorsport that have defined its identity for over a century.