Breitling still uses the name today, while we dropped it after a year, believing that in the US the term “Automatic Chronograph” was easier
for the client to understand than the generic name “Chronomatic”.
One idiosyncratic detail with our new self-winding chronograph was that
the best place for the winding crown was on the left side of the case, while
clients were of course used to seeing a winding crown in its traditional position on the right side of a watch’s case. Initially we all thought a crown
on the left side did indeed look weird, but then we decided to turn it into an
exclusive and distinctive feature. By having the crown on the left we would
in effect be saying: “This chronograph does not need winding every day
because it is automatic. The crown is used only for setting the time of day
or for readjusting the time if it varies by a minute or so after a certain period,
and for this the wearer takes the watch off anyway.” This statement made a
lot of sense and we have used it in one form or another ever since.
In 1967 the Board of Directors decided to bring young blood into the company.
Hubert Heuer’s son-in-law, Thüring von Erlach, a lawyer from Bern, was elected to the Board together with Dominique de Charrière, the husband of my sister Irène. Dominique was a mechanical engineer trained at the Lausanne Polytechnicum (EPFL) who worked as sales manager in Geneva for the machine
tool manufacturer Tarex. Both took their seats on the Board on 1 January 1968.
We ended the year 1967 with sales of CHF 8.5 million, an increase of 19%
over the previous year. Our sales had increased markedly, but then again
so had our costs.
Around 1968 the overall market situation remained rather uncertain, but
fortunately our order books were still quite full. Our key problem was how
to increase production capacity. We were looking for watchmakers,
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