History of Breitling Watches

While there are many luxury watches on the high end wrist watch market today, not many are as popular, nor as desirable as the Breitling Navitimer Watch series. Besides it unique and fashionable styling, this chronograph has been providing useful functionality for several decades. While the watch itself is fascinating, the company’s innovative history is just as fascinating.

Breitling, a Swiss company, was first established back in 1884. While most people assume the company was originally founded in the Swiss town of La Chaux-de-Fonds, it was actually established in the town of Saint Imier, which is located in the Swiss Jura Mountains. Leon Breitling was the original founder of the Breitling Company.

In 1892, Leon Breitling decided to move his new company from Saint Imier to Switzerland’s primary wrist watch producing center, La Chaux-de-Fonds (you can easily see why people are sometimes confused about Breitling’s original location).

Later, in 1914, Leon’s son, Gaston, took over management of the Breitling Company. This is very important because with the change in management came a key innovation in the history of time keeping. Specifically, in 1915, Gaston Breitling created the world’s first wrist watch chronograph.

Under Gaston Breitling’s leadership, the company would become a Royal Air Force official supplier in 1936. A few years later, Breitling would also become a supplier to the American forces as well. It was during this period that Breitling became internationally known as a company that primarily made aviation-oriented wrist watches.

In 1979, the Breitling Company was transferred from the Breitling family to Ernest Schneider. As of 2009, the Breitling Watch Company is the leader in producing high quality, aviation-oriented wrist watches. As an example, one of their most successful innovations has been the Breitling Emergency, which contains a micro sized transmitter that provides an aircraft emergency frequency. This function has been used several times to save numerous lives. Of course, if you choose to purchase this wrist watch, you must be extremely vigilant to not initiate the transmitter. If you do, you may find some very unhappy emergency responders knocking at your front door.