Designer Watch Store

Breitling Chronomat

The Chronomat Evolution is considered the Flagship model in the Breitling range. The Chronomat was launched in 1942, and was very advanced for its time. It was the first watch to to incorporate a slide rule but curiously for Breitling, it was not promoted as a pilot's watch, rather as a timepiece suitable for engineers and mathematicians. The movement is the Venus 175, 17-jewels with a centre chronograph hand recording seconds, a minute chronograph register at 3 o'clock recording up to 45 minutes, and a running seconds hand on the sub-dial at 9 o'clock. A curious feature of the Chronomat is that it incorporates special markers on the minute register for 3, 6 and 9 minutes. The reason for these markers is that long-distance phone calls were charged in 3-minute increments in most countries, and were very expensive at the time.

In 1969, the first automatic Chronomats were launched. They used the famous "Chrono-Matic" Calibre 11/12 microrotor-movement developed by Breitling in a joint effort with Heuer. The Chronomat proved to be a big seller, and powered by different calibers it stayed in the Breitling line up right until the takeover by Schneider in 1978.

During the late 70's Breitling even produced non-chronograph Chronomats.

The Chronomat was then relaunched in 1984, and made a welcome return to the traditional mechanical chronograph. In keeping with Breitlings heritage, the new Chronomat was designed and marketed firmly as a pilots watch, in close cooperation with the Italian Air Force Acrobatics team, "Pattuglia Acrobatica Nazionale Frecce Tricolori". The new Chronomat had the famous rider tabs on the bezel, designed to be easy to grip while wearing gloves in the cockpit.

During the 80ties and 90ties, Breitling moved on to make several special versions of the Chronomat, notably the Yachting, Blackbird," Breitling for America", USAF 50 years and even Moonphase versions.

The latest Chronomat; the Evolution was launched at Basel in April, 2004. The Evolution is a noticably bigger watch than its forebearers, bigger in diameter, thickness and weight and is quite a departure from the original 1984 model.

The Chronomat remains a superb piece of engineering and has a solid reputation for quality; it is a superbly designed and built watch with an extremely accurate, reliable and sturdy movement.