The Chronomat holds a significant place in Breitling’s history. When the Breitling Chronomat was launched in 1984, it marked a welcome return to mechanical Swiss watches, which had all but disappeared when quartz watches dominated the marketplace in the 1970s. Breitling had used the name Chronomat for some of its 1940s watches, and, in those early days, the word was a portmanteau of “chronograph for mathematics”. The 1984 Chronomat expressed something different: “chronograph” and “automatic”, a name that called attention to the self-winding mechanical movement.