The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I´m baffled?

I could swear reading a few years ago (maybe 4) about the history of chronograph wristwatches and found from several sources that the first one would have been made by Breitling. That´s how it´s told on the Breitling Source sites history article "1915 · Gaston Breitling creates the first wristwatch chronograph and subsequently provides pilots with their first wrist instruments." I could swear that about the same was also said at the time in Wikipedia (not the best source i know) but in a few other places as well.

I seem to remember similar discussion here as well, but can´t find them.

I´m writing an article about wristwatches with a friend and started catching up on it. Now I fid that it was actually Heuer who had the first? Do I remember it that much off (wich wouldn´t be the first) or has there been some change in the information during few years?

Just trying to get my head around it.

First chronograph was generally accepted to be Nicholas Rieussec in 1821 but that was a box (and likely not actually the first). Not sure on the first pocket watch chrono, but Breitling is (to the best of my knowledge) still recognised as the first wrist watch chrono in 1915. First automatic chrono is either the consortium of Heuer / Hamilton / Breitling / Dubois Depraz (first completed watch, first to market) or Zenith (first movement announced) depending on your definition - both in early 1969.

Yes, there is a lot of misinformation out there, half truths and careless wording. I think the rapid spread of misinformation it is one of the downsides of the internet really. Contradictory records have always been with us, so that’s nothing new. But, so much guff written in cyberspace and taken at face value and disseminated so rapidly, it’s hard to know what the real story is sometimes.

It’s not until you find ‘so called’ facts that contradict your earlier understanding that you start to get a feeling that there are opposing opinions or there is slopping research at work. It’s all too easy to blog or article your way through and have others pick up on this as fact, instead of opinion, and at incredible speed. This was not what you expected.

Too much opinion dressed up as fact and far too many assumptions and hypothesis taken as the truth. I think the best way to do research is to stick to official histories sanctioned by the maker or originator and avoid drawing conclusions. I feel your anxiety.

My beloved undertakes genealogical research, searching records and accounts of a person’s life, their achievements and historical data, etc. The number of times she works over competing and contradictory evidence (so called) is extraordinary. Some of the official information she has is as incorrect as some of the hearsay she reads. It sometimes takes here days and weeks to get a story straight and even then it can still be a little clunky. She has been accredited by many of her peers as a researcher of very high regard. She will not include some details she comes across in her writings, as it cannot be verified. But, she knows that others doing similar research will gladly make assumptions for the sake of completing an historical view; on the basis that they believe they are probably right.

Oh dear.

Good luck with the research.

_________________
Jim

"You have Control".