THE GOLDEN AGE OF WATCHMAKING: PREMIER, DUOGRAPH AND DATORA, 1943-1949

There are debates as to what is the “Golden Age of Watchmaking.” Some cite the Roaring Twenties as the great horological decade, when the wristwatch was just coming of age. It was a time when shaped movements—round, square, rectangular, lozenge, barrel, cushion, curved—made any case configuration possible and, with no formal design language yet established, watchmakers had carte blanche to create.

Others consider the Baby Boomer years of the 1950s to be the era when all the magic happened, thanks to that decade’s abundance of elegant, automatic dress watches and the beginning of the dive-watch craze triggered by Jacques Cousteau’s mesmerizing underwater film, The Silent World. You could also make a case for the Swinging Sixties, when so many of today’s cherished steel sports chronographs were launched, or the 1970s when Gerald Genta, the god of watch design, created many of his masterpieces.

All are valid arguments, but for the chronograph collector, the Golden Age of Watchmaking must be the 1940s, when chronographs found form, function and practical usability, when tool watches evolved into elegant works of art, when all the relevant complications were added to the calibers that we still treat with such high respect today.

This book takes an up-close look at what were considered Breitling’s luxury lines—the Premier, the Duograph rattrapante and the Datora full-calendar—produced from that seminal decade onward.

Breitling’s definition of “Premier” was and still is to be top of the line in every detail: the best calibers, the best materials and the best designs.