Horological Meandering

Team,

All that followed the 11th series of "Weekend Breitling" should remember that those pieces are from a dear friend that collects Breitlings.

Few weeks back he called with an amazing information: "I was organizing my collection and I could locate two more boxes. Do you want to photograph the watches?".

My answer is here:

First box. Very old, and some in very bad state. Some are in outstanding shape.

Some has wrong parts, crowns etc. but each has some historic significance.

Next week I go to post the remaining ones, more "modern" (70's or so) but very interesting.

Let's go for the show:

Let's wait for the Breitling experts opinion.

A wonderful week to all,

Nilo

The black dialed chrono is much my taste!

Any information about it ( size, movement, era ) ?

Best,

Nicolas

I'm sorry, but II was literally drowning on watches and I didn't had time for details.

This series is only 50% of the set!

Lets wait for Ubik.

Cheers,

Nilo

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its quite unusual to see non chrono vintage Breitlings. they are not something many people usually associate with Breitling, but they made them and sold them quite well. it has always seemed a shame to me that Breitling, with their excellent reputation for chrono's, never made an in house calibre until recently. does that matter? no i dont think so. all the movements they used were tried, tested and reliable. this is the only vintage non chrono Breitling i have ever owned. a 1930's pilots watch.

G

By the unbelievable large number of models that, not only Breitling, the Swiss industry produced during those times.

I agree that Breitling didn't use an "in house" movement until recently but that was the production model and only recently that we started to have this "in house" frenzy.

Traditional manufacturers, including Patek, JLC, Vacheron etc. produced in special chronographs, using ebauches from others.

Cheers,

Nilo

The story of the movement, especially in the early Breitlings, is a lot more complex (and still undiscovered) than we currently know.

As you've said in reality there are very few vintage in-house chronograph manufacturers, everyone else outsourced their movements from other places,
including some of what many consider to be the most prestigious names in watchmaking. If we take a brand like Longines, perhaps the one most closely associated with high quality and technical innovation in Chronograph movements. They only ever had one in-house movement in production at any one time - no more.

However Breitling had more complex relationships, it would seem to me, with companies like Venus. Except for at the beginning of it's creation and at
the end of it's life the Venus 178 was used (almost) exclusively by Breitling. It's very rare to find it in any other watches. So quite likely it was a reserved calibre for Breitling. Now while they didn't make it directly, Breitling certainly used it almost excluisvely and quite likely to their exact specifications.

There is some evidence that Breitling did have a in-house calibre pre-1940's, but ultimately post-40's established a close relationship with Venus and used their movements exclusively in all their chronographs.

Of course Breitling is credited with several important patents, so while they didn't manufacture these patents (at least as far as I know) did they commision people to manufacture them. If you patent something and someone else manufactures it, where does that stand?

It's also clear that Breitling in the pre-40's period were used to working closely with ebauch manufacturers and on occasion influenced and specified design elements they wanted in their watches. This type of technical involvement goes all the way to the Sixties, where they were one of several key partners behind the development of the first automatic movement and also deisgned and patented the waterproof slide-rule case.

Their fascination for me, is in the overall design. The first chronomat strikes me as an exciting and very original design. When you think of the watches of the Forties, to me, it stands out as a design classic.

Searching I could locate a post, from you, that mention the other brands that used the Venus 178 (Benrus Sky Chief and Universal Aero compax).

I'm doing a more broad research about when the "in house movement" was converted on a major marketing advantage.

Cheers,

Nilo
This message has been edited by nilomis on 2013-04-08 10:03:35

Thanks for that background Ubik. A lot of information that i wasnt aware of despite having read a book on Breitling inside out :)
My comment wasnt a negative point really as all the movements they have ever used have been high quality ones and as you say, very few other companies made their own chrono movements at that time.
I'm a big Breitling fan and wish i still had some of the pieces that have gone.

We can talk about it at a later date over a glass of chateau splosh.

Best
G

Look forward to uncorking a bottle with you.

thanks for posting Nilo. It's a bit hard to know how to be constructive on so many different styles of watches, without doing a very long post.

First off, it's hard to come back to you with more information, because there's not enough information here to comment on. Ideally there
are a few extra things I would need to see to be able to be specific. That would be the two ref numbers (if there are two) on the caseback (inside or out),
the movement and whether it is signed.

A few of these watches I have my suspicions about, some may be other watches tricked up to look llike a Breitling, others - as you say - may be franken watches
made from an assortment of spare parts. Not that I am saying they all are, just in some cases there isn't enough information to know exactly what's going on with them.

Let me ask you, if I highlight a few can you get more pictures or more information about them, and I might come back with some more specific thoughts?

I have the case back pictures of each that had any case back marks on it.

It's my understanding that he put those pieces and forgot about, because he had some concerns about each watch.

On other hand, on next week I go to post pictures of the other box that was with Chronomatic and Top Time that seems, to my untrained eyes, in great shape.

Cheers,

Nilo