In 1804, Ali Effendi, then Minister for the Navy, commissioned the finest possible repeating watch for the Ottoman Emperor, Selim III, to whom he referred only – according to Turkish custom – as 'the greatest person in our country… so great and so eminent that I may not utter his name'. The project was a success: the emperor demanded a second watch identical to the first, and Ali Effendi wrote to Breguet the following year: 'Your reputation in Constantinople could not be higher. All the great princes admire your works.'