Of course the dispute will go and the likes of Heuer and Seiko played their part in history but 46 years later the El Primero movement is still being utilised today and it has more or less remained unchanged. Though you can’t take anything away from Heuer and Seiko, Zenith produced the more superior automatic chronograph movement in the El Primero. It was that 7 year journey that started in 1962 that produced, arguably, one of the best automatic chronographs ever made. While Heuer were better prepared for production and Seiko silently released theirs in 1969 (but was only made available to the Japanese market) – it was Zenith who actually announced their automatic chronograph movement first. But when it all comes down to it, the fact of the matter is this. However, there were a couple of silent watch manufactures working on this advance too: in the Far East was Seiko, who were busy working on their own version and then there was company from Le Locle – Zenith!īut, and it is a big but, who was first? Was it Heuer/Hamilton-Buren/Breitling or Seiko who actually beat Zenith to the market? This has long been analysed in detail and you can read that in-depth story on Project 99 written by none other than Jeff Stein. There were of course a few companies that shared an interest in claiming this technological breakthrough: Heuer/Buren-Hamilton/Breitling.
During the early 1960s there was a race on to see who could create the world’s first self-winding (automatic) chronograph. The El Primero is a legend within its own right but there is a much debated story behind it. It was only as recently as the 1960s that there was a push to invent an automatic chronograph and while Zenith can be considered the first, it wasn’t quite that straight forward. As we all know, chronographs have been around since the 19 th century but it wasn’t that long ago that automatic chronographs were introduced. You see, we’re talking about one of the most important manufactures in history that produced, arguably, one of the most important watch movements of the 20 th century. Zenith El Primero Original 1969: What is there to say about the El Primero? Quite a lot really.
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