Who decided (and based on what concepts) that switch construction (in many languages) has to use break in each statement?

Why do we have to write something like this:

switch(a)
{
    case 1:
        result = 'one';
        break;
    case 2:
        result = 'two';
        break;
    default:
        result = 'not determined';
        break;
}


(noticed this in PHP and JS; there are probably many other languages using this)

If switch is an alternative of if, why we can't use the same construction as for if? I.e.:

switch(a)
{
    case 1:
    {
        result = 'one';
    }
    case 2:
    {
        result = 'two';
    }
    default:
    {
        result = 'not determined';
    }
}


It is said that break prevents the execution of the block following the current one. But, does someone really run into the situation, where there was any need for execution of the current block and following ones? I didn't. For me, break is always there. In every block. In every code.

C was one of the first languages to have the switch statement in this form, and all other major languages inherited it from there, mostly choosing to keep the C semantics per default - they either didn't think of the advantages of changing it, or judged them less important than keeping the behaviour everyone was used to.

As for why C was designed that way, it probably stems from the concept of C as "portable assembly". The switch statement is basically an abstraction of a branch table, and a branch table also has an implicit fall-through and requires an additional jump instruction to avoid it.

So basically, the designers of C also chose to keep the assembler semantics per default.
