Rare French gold quarter-hour repeating à toc watch Circa 1792

Gold repeating watch by Abraham-Louis Breguet
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An important French pocket watch with quarter-hour repeater à toc and anchor escapement after Robert Robin, circa 1792. The watch features an 18k rose gold polished case crafted by Guillaume Mermillod, and is hallmarked B8218 and B82. It has an enamel dial with Breguet radial hours, an outer minutes track, and gold hands. It also has a full plate keywind movement with two hammers, a temperature-compensated balance spring, a chain/fusee, and a three-arm steel ring balance.
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It was sold on June 28, 1793, to Monsieur Fabre Loncle for 1680 francs, with Breguet extract from the archives No. 4710.
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Diameter: 50 mm
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Weight: 91 g
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Signed: Breguet Paris
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Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823), widely acknowledged as the most significant watchmaker of the 18th century, established his company in Paris in 1775 and dedicated all his efforts to enhancing watch movements. He diverged from the prevailing trends of his era and cultivated his own enduring style in which function dictated form. Breguet’s distinctive trademarks included its exquisitely guilloched dials and cases; the guilloche machines were the most intricate and precise machines constructed in the 17th and 18th centuries. Nevertheless, Breguet gained renown for his ingenious innovations such as shock protection, temperature compensation, the ruby cylinder, the constant-force escapement, and ultimately his masterpiece, the tourbillon. Breguet’s advancements continue to be utilized in mechanical watches today; some have been refined since his time, while others have retained their original form.
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Robert Robin  (1741-1799) was a talented and inventive clock and watchmaker who counted among his clientele the French Royal Family. He became Marchand-Horloger Privilégié du Roi on 22 October 1763 and resigned on 13 September 1765 in favour of Jean-Pierre Courtois. In 1778 the Académie des Sciences approved two of his inventions, one being an astronomical clock representing a meridian drawn on a pyramid, which the Menus Plaisirs acquired that year for Louis XIV, for 30,000 livres. During the same period, he perfected his famous mantel clocks with astronomical indications and compensated pendulums, one of the first owners being the Marquis de Courtanvaux. Robin applied these principles to regulators, the Duc d’Aumont possessed an early model of this kind. He was equally interested in watches, using a special escapement that bears his name from 1786 onwards and in monumental clocks, supplying the Grand Commun at Versailles (1782), the Menus Plaisirs and the Petit Trianon (1785). Many members of Parisian high society were clients of Robin, including the maréchaux Ducs of Duras and Richelieu and the Marquis de Sérent, tutor to the dukes of Angoulême and Berry. In 1794, Robin was appointed Horloger de la République. After the French Revolution, he was given the task of making an inventory of the Royal clocks including the 23 that belonged to Marie Antoinette.
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Montre à toc. A ‘dumb’ repeater watch in which a hammer strikes the inside of the case to produce a muffled sound. Invented by Julian Le Roy in 1740.