French watchmakers (people)

Jean Adrien Philippe (April 16, 1815, La Bazoche-Gouet, Eure-et-Loir – January 5, 1894) was a French horologist and cofounder of watchmaker Patek Philippe & Co. of Geneva, Switzerland.In 1842, Adrien Philippe invented a mechanism for watches which allowed them to be wound and set by means of a crown rather than a key. His patented invention earned him a Bronze Medal at the French Industrial Exposition of 1844 (World's Fair). At the Exhibition, Adrien Philippe first met Antoni Patek and a year later became head watchmaker at Patek & Co. in Geneva under an agreement that entitled him to one third of all company profits.
Adrien Philippe proved to be very capable at his craft and a product innovator whose value to the firm was such that by 1851 he was made a full partner and the firm began operating as Patek Philippe & Co. In 1863 he published a book in Geneva and Paris on the workings of pocket watches titled Les montres sans clef.
In 1875, Adrien Philippe commissioned a watch that he later gave his daughter, Louise, as a wedding present, which is known as the only wristwatch dating back to be owned by either Patek or Philippe. This historical watch is known as “The Watchmaker’s Daughter” and was auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2023 by the descendants of Adrien Philippe. The watch was purchased most probably by the Patek Philippe Museum though this is not confirmed and may be owned by a private collector. The wedding between Louise and Joseph Antoine Bénassy-Philippe that the watch was presented at is noted as the wedding that saved Patek Philippe by providing the company a much needed successor to Antoni Patek for the company to survive the founding generation.
His partner Antoni Patek died in 1877 and in 1891 the 76-year-old Adrien Philippe handed over the day-to-day management of the business to his son Joseph Emile Philippe and Francois Antoine Conty.Jean Adrien Philippe died in 1894 and was buried in St-Georges Cemetery in Geneva.

Louis François Clément Breguet (22 December 1804 – 27 October 1883), was a French physicist and watchmaker, noted for his work in the early days of telegraphy.
Educated in Switzerland, Breguet was the grandson of Abraham-Louis Breguet, founder of the watch manufacturing company Breguet. He became manager of Breguet et Fils watchmakers in 1833 after his father Louis Antoine Breguet retired.
Between 1835 and 1840 he standardized the company product line of watches, then making 350 watches per year, and diversified into scientific instruments, electrical devices, recording instruments, an electric thermometer, telegraph instruments and electrically synchronized clocks. With Alphonse Foy, in 1842 he developed the Foy-Breguet telegraph, an electrical needle telegraph to replace the optical telegraph system then in use. and a later step-by-step telegraph system (1847) was applied to French railways and exported to Japan. He observed in 1847 that small wires could be used to protect telegraph installations from lightning, the ancestor of the fuse.
In 1850 he manufactured a rotating mirror used by Hippolyte Fizeau to measure the relative speed of light in air and water.: 129  In 1856 he designed a public network of synchronized electric clocks for the center of Lyon. In 1866 he patented an electric clock controlled by a 100 Hz tuning fork.In 1870 he transferred the leadership of the company to Edward Brown. Breguet then focused entirely on the telegraph and the nascent field of telecommunications. He collaborated in the development of an induction coil, later improved by Heinrich Ruhmkorff.
In terms of honors, in 1843 he was appointed to the Bureau of Longitudes. In 1845 Breguet was awarded the Legion d'Honneur. He was made a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1874, and was elevated to Officer of the Legion d'Honneur in 1877. He is one of the 72 French scientists whose names are written around the base of the Eiffel Tower.Breguet was married and had one son Antoine (1851–1882) who also joined the family electrical business. With his son, he met Alexander Graham Bell and obtained a license to manufacture Bell telephones for the French market. He was the grandfather of Louis Charles Breguet and the uncle of Sophie Berthelot.