Description: Gilt brass, front wound experimental souscription full plate movement (55.7mm diameter). Big barrel suspended at the centre, secured by spring steel clip. First type of Breguet’s lever escapement, lacking balance bridge and balance, which would have been a plain brass non-compensated type. Four spoked brass escape, pallets are slotted for oil retention. Balance spring regulator acting over an intricate system of linkage and adjustable at the rim. White enamelled copper dial with Roman numerals, five-minute divisions and signed ‘Breguet’ in Roman capital letters, a style introduced 1795. NO secret signature (introduced 1796) The dial secured with one screw and one pin at the edge of the movement. Movement rim engraved ‘BREGUET A PARIS No. 178. Single blued steel flat ‘Breguet souscription’ hand (restored). As discussed above the manufacturing of this movement started as soon as 1792, it was certainly finished not earlier than 1795.
Additional Info:
The movement above is one of only four known with this experimental caliber using other than ruby cylinder escapements. The others are No. 319 (3rd series), No. 106/4291, and a unnumbered version (3rd series) which has no sale date. No. 106/4291 is almost identical to the presented movement. This example is the only one having Roman numerals on an enameled dial. Other features of these earliest examples are the fixation of the dial by two screws or one screw and one pin from the rim and most prominently, the position of the balance underneath the dial.
It is not surprising that some work started in the early 1790s was finished after Breguet’s return from his exile in Switzerland 1795. Another interesting fact about this movement is, that it has the same production number as a traveling clock sold to general Napoleon Bonaparte the 24th of April 1798 (Sold at Antiquorum, Geneva, 14.04.1991). The same is true for the watch No. 179, listed in the ledger the 5th of March 1792, which is a quarter repeating verge sold to Marie – Antoinette, while she was emprisonned in the ‘Temple’. There is also a travelling clock with the same number 179 (Sold at Christie’s, Auction 7864, 8.07.2010, London, Lot. 98). According to the Breguet cerificate Nr. 2889 (1945, revised by Emmanuel Breguet 2010) the manufacture was started 1796 and the clock was sold in 1804 to the King of Naples, S.M. Ferdinand IV de Bourbon.
The travelling clock No. 178 was the first, No. 179 the second of this type ever made by Breguet, so the overlapping numbering with the pocket watches No. 178 and No. 179 might reflect an incertainty about how to integrate the numbering of travelling clocks into the production registers.
Breguet’s lever escapement
By 1787 Breguet was able to construct very reliable lever escapements, which design was certainly inspired by English work. Breguet redesigned the lever escapement completely making it better than anything he might have seen in London. He renamed the escapement ‘échapement libre‘. The lever escapement has been invented by Thomas Mudge around 1755 (apprentice of George Graham, who refined the cylinder escapement), but it was found to be too complicated to produce. So despite great results concerning amelioration of time keeping it was rarely used by him. Thomas Earnshaw and George Margetts have been presented with this type of escapement by Mudge and they developed it further. Breguet then managed to make the lever escapement simpler and cost effective.
Antiquarian Horology 
