Zenith el primero chronograph code#

The El Primero’s power reserve was nearly 50 hours, well above the standard at the time. Its balance frequency was an unprecedented, lightning-quick 36,600 vph (5 Hz), which in practical terms meant that the built-in stopwatch function, driven by a classical column wheel, was capable of measuring elapsed times to 1/10th second - a significant achievement considering that most chronograph calibers to that point oscillated at 21,600 vph (as Seiko’s caliber did) or 19,600 (like the Chrono-Matic) even today, 28,800 vph, or 4 Hz, is the standard for most chronograph movements.The rotor that wound the movement had a tungsten carbide weight that maximized each motion of the watch’s wearer’s arm to continually wind the mainspring. Its all-new dry lubricant based on molybdenum sulfate helped ensure long-term precision by lessening friction. In addition to its self-winding properties, Despite the complexity endowed by its 278 parts, it measured just 6.5 mm in height, meaning watches that contained it could be similarly slim and wearable. In keeping with Zenith’s historical mission statement of pushing the boundaries of timekeeping accuracy, the original El Primero (Caliber 3019H) was “the first” in many regards. While Zenith’s groundbreaking movement was not actually available in a commercial product until later in the year, it did live up to the name its creators gave it - “El Primero,” or “The First” - by virtue of its January debut to the public. Zenith’s movement made it to the finish line first, announced at a press conference on Janubeating the Caliber 11 “Chrono-Matic” that arose from the Breitling-Heuer consortium’s efforts, which launched on March 10 of that year, and the Seiko Caliber 6139, which hit the market in May. Zenith missed its self-imposed deadline to complete the project in its centennial year, and other watch manufacturers began throwing their hat in the ring subsequently, all vying to be the first to lay claim to the first great horological invention of the 20th century.ĭuring the next few years, the Great Automatic Chronograph Race kicked into high gear, with Zenith competing against a consortium of Swiss firms that had teamed up to develop its own self-winding chronograph caliber (made up of Heuer-Leonidas, Breitling, Buren-Hamilton, and Dubois-Depraz), as well as Japan’s Seiko, which like Zenith was pursuing the project on its own. Self-winding, or automatic, watch calibers had been around in some form since Abraham-Louis Perrelet invented the first one in 1770, but the technology had yet to be successfully applied to a chronograph caliber. It was in that spirit that Zenith, on the occasion of its 100th anniversary in 1965, decided to tackle the biggest technical challenge that faced the watch industry to that point: the invention of a self-winding mechanical chronograph movement. In all, Zenith would go on to win 2,330 chronometry prizes over the years - a record that still stands - establishing the brand as a leader in the pursuit of timekeeping precision.

Another of the company’s historical movements, Caliber 135, dominated the Neuchâtel Observatory’s chronometry awards for an unprecedented five years, from 1950 to 1954. became Zenith in 1911, the company taking its new name from a top-of-the-line movement it created that won a Grand Prix for precision at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair. Favre-Jacot, a contemporary of Swiss modern architecture pioneer le Corbusier, took his own pioneering approach to making watches, becoming one of the first to bring the various horological disciplines under one roof as opposed to the more common établissage system that most watchmakers used at the time, which had different parts made in different small workshops before being delivered to another workshop for assembly into a finished watch, Georges Favre-Jacot & co. Watchmaker Georges Favre-Jacot was a mere 22 years of age when he founded the atelier that would become Zenith in Le Locle, Switzerland in 1865. Here we examine what made the El Primero so special in the first place and introduce you to some modern watches that demonstrate how it is still evolving and improving in the 21st century. The reasons for its renown are several, from the technical revolution it represented at its origin to the legendary role it played in the post- Quartz Crisis revival of the mechanical watch. The Zenith El Primero, found today in watches throughout Zenith’s collection, from the Chronomaster to the Defy to the Pilot, is arguably the watch world’s most famous movement - more widely known, in fact, than some of the watch models to whom it has given life during its half-century-plus of existence.

Zenith el primero chronograph code#

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