Timekeeping improvements followed quickly during the century that followed. The first watches with a seconds hand appeared in the 1690s. The first chronograph, consisting of a seconds hand which could be stopped independently while the watch itself kept running, appeared in 1776.   One of the biggest events of the era, though, wasn't the birth of an idea, but of an idea man. Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823), just about everyone agrees, was the greatest watchmaker of all time. Born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, he spent most of his life working in Paris, where he became the watch and clockmaking darling of the ancient regime before the French Revolution. When the conflict was over, he made amends with the victors and they, too, became his customers. He was watchmaker to European royalty and U.S. presidents (George Washington owned a Breguet. So did Alexander I. Marie Antoinette owned many, Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte were avid customers, as were other Bonaparte family members.) Everyone wanted, to paraphrase an English baronet, writing a century after Breguet's death, "to hold the brains of a genius in [his] pocket."
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