However, they weren’t alone in aspiring to be first in this race. It wasn’t until late in 1968 that Zenith was able to put together a prototype. Given that Zenith was still a relatively small operation in the 60s, various constraints meant that the 1965 timeline wasn’t achieved. This was no ordinary endeavour and it required substantial deployment of resources. Zenith decided in 1962 that they would cater to the auto-chrono demand and launch their take on it in 1965 to celebrate the brand’s centenary. It was a time when manual-winding chronographs were starting to feel outdated. Tool watches were at the peak of their popularity, be it for naval operations, timing races or otherwise. Automatic watches were becoming quite popular in the 1950s and people wanted to see that technology adopted in chronographs too. The Origins: The Race Towards The World’s First Automatic ChronographĮl Primero, which translates into ‘the first’ in Spanish, was Zenith’s answer to calls for a self-winding chronograph wristwatch. Fifty years since, the iconic calibre remains in production with a rather dramatic history behind it.
This was all achieved mechanically and it furthered Zenith’s reputation as a powerhouse of innovation in chronometry. It was an automatic chronograph movement designed from the ground-up, and one that could measure elapsed time down to 1/10th of a second. That’s what Zenith did with the El Primero. Now imagine a small company accomplishing all of those together, in its own workshop, all the way back in 1969. There are some watchmaking pursuits that still remain dear to the most prestigious watch houses-precision, thinness, in-house movements, complications, to name a few. Despite our implicit understanding that the appeal of mechanical wristwatches is driven by nostalgia and aspiration more than utility, innovation in the sphere has never quite ceased.
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