Breitling’s 140 Years of Firsts with Natasha Mekhail

What stories can 140 years of legacy possibly hold? Of inventions and fascinating discoveries, perhaps? Of triumphs and perseverance? All of them at once? Such is the case with Breitling – a fiercely independent watchmaker that, in many ways, shaped the horological world into what it is today. All these milestones and more, we can read about in Breitling: 140 Years in 140 Stories, edited by the brand’s editorial and publishing manager Natasha Mekhail. The launch of this volume, which is now available for pre-order, also coincided with an ambitious international heritage exhibition. As expected, this showcase provided a fascinating insight into the brand’s legacy.

The story began with Léon Breitling, who founded the manufacturing company Breitling in Saint-Imier (Switzerland) in 1884. “He was interested more in measuring time than in telling time,” Mekhail explains, “which explains why chronographs were always Breitling’s niche.” The need for chronographs was brought by the Industrial Revolution, states Mekhail, as “people needed to ensure the most efficient workflow on the assembly lines by timing every process.” These chronographs were still, of course, pocket watches. It wasn’t until 1914, during World War I, when the brand founder’s heir, Gaston Breitling, decided to introduce the second pusher at 2 o’clock on all Breitling chronographs and mount them on a strap. “These were the watches for soldiers,” Mekhail adds, “they didn’t have time to reach into their pockets to time artillery and such.”

In 1943, Breitling revolutionized the world of chronographs by patenting a circular logarithmic slide rule within a wristwatch. This innovative system allowed for easy mathematical operations such as multiplication, division, and rule-of-three problems. Breitling’s 1942 Chronomat, shortened from "Chronographe-Mathematique," had a sleek profile and a well-balanced dial that appealed to sportsmen, industrial workers, and technical professionals alike. It wasn’t until Breitling pitched the wrist-worn slide rule to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) that the concept really took flight. By incorporating the circular slide rule into a rotating bezel and adding small beads for easy manipulation even with gloved hands, the Navitimer was born. Its name, a combination of "navigation" and "timer," perfectly encapsulated its purpose – to be a pilot's ultimate "flight computer." 

In the 1960s, Breitling launched the reverse-panda Navitimer – what we now consider a classic, adored by Miles Davis and F1 drivers. This model was also beloved by the pioneering American aviator Jane Briggs Hart. Around the same time, it veered into diving watches (which had become all the rage after Jacques Costeau invented scuba diving equipment). “That’s when Breitling created the first diving chronograph, which was a big deal, because wherever you have pushers, you have a way for water to get in,” Mekhail explains, “In the 1960s, Breitling did away with the chronograph seconds hand on its dive watches, since divers rely purely on minutes.” The sixties were also a time of change – major cultural shifts reverberated through the Old World, and, while dive watches were still popular, pure chronographs fell out of favor. “Young people found them too old-school, [these watches] reminded them of war and their grandparents,” says Mekhail, “so Willy created the cushion case design, which became very popular – women wanted these big watches and they started making their way into fashion magazines.” 

In the aftermath of World War II, Breitling also began producing cocktail watches for women, which were influenced by Willy’s wife, Beatrice. “She was a dancer, like Ginger Rogers,” says Mekhail, “Willy met her when she was performing in Geneva,” and she was instrumental in driving the direction for these watches. Plus, she’s the one who came up with the name Top Time – the maison’s pioneering foray into more “fashion-forward” timepieces (Willy had previously considered naming the model Time Top, which, to Beatrice, didn’t quite have a ring to it). 

Willy also saw an opportunity in then-nascent space exploration. Seven years before the moon landing, he oversaw the creation of Cosmonaute – the maison’s first 24-hour chronograph. “NASA astronaut Scott Carpenter knew about the Navitimer,” Mekhail explains, “so he called up Breitling and commissioned a watch with a 24-hour dial, because, in space, the sun rises or sets every 45 minutes, so it’s unreliable in telling time.” Around the same time, Breitling also created the first-ever watch with a miniaturized international distress beacon – Breitling Emergency. “This came out of Willy’s conversation with a NATO official, who stated that people who found themselves in an emergency while exploring the Arctic or after suffering a plane crash needed a beacon that would be on them,” says Mekhail. Curiously enough, Virgin Atlantic’s Richard Branson credited this exact watch with saving his life at least twice.

Then, in 1979, Willy Breitling sold the company to Ernest Schneider, who had to take the brand through a tumultuous period that buried many respectable watchmakers – the Quartz Crisis. “This was a period in history when inexpensive watches [especially produced by Japanese giants like Seiko] flooded the market,” Mekhail recounts, “It took over from the traditional watchmaking that had been taking place in Switzerland because quartz is cheap and more precise.” There was another issue that led to a downfall of Swiss watchmaking – the Swiss Franc was unpegged from the US Dollar and skyrocketed, making the watches produced in the country no longer affordable to the American customer. 

To adapt to this, dare we say, “new normal”, Schneider decided to focus heavily on the aviation industry; this era of the brand can also be defined by heightened machismo and hyper-masculinity, which, unfortunately, meant that a lot of the brand’s potential female customers at the time were left largely ostracized. “In the 1980s, there were two categories of people who were still loyal to mechanical watches – Italians and pilots. At the time, the Italian aerobatic team Frecce Tricolori were looking for watches for their members – timepieces they could wear on and off duty. During his meeting with them, Schneider noticed that when they opened the jet's canopy, they were bashing the watch crystal against it, and it sometimes would damage their watches. Hence, he recessed the crystal and added four tabs on the bezel that acted like a bumper,” Mekhail explains.

The new millennium brought with it a new era for Breitling. In 2009, for example, the maison launched its first in-house movement – the Breitling Manufacture Caliber 01, which is “extremely modular and hence can be used as a base to mount different complications on,” says Mekhail. In 2017, Georges Kern was appointed CEO and brought back the beloved Breitling models from the 20th century. And, earlier this year, the brand renewed its vow to female empowerment by collaborating with fashion designer Victoria Beckham on a line of 36mm Chronomats. “We don’t normally work with yellow gold,” says Mekhail, “but this was her request.” 

There’s much more, of course, that’s hidden in the Breitling family’s archives – more than these mere pages can count. But even a glimpse of these stories reveals feats of ingenuity and perseverance. Who’s to say that the next 140 years won’t be as triumphant?