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Yet, the efforts of a single rebellious Zenith head watchmaker in the 1970s ensured that the caliber would in fact survive the times, and go on to spawn a whole collection of exceptional chronographs in the ensuing decades, ultimately ensconcing Zenith amongst the true greats in mechanical horology. Hard to believe as it may be now, this legendary self-winding chronograph movement with column wheel and high frequency super performance was nearly consigned to the wastebin as the reaper’s scythe of the quartz crisis cut deep into the realities of the mechanical watch industry. And rise it did, to be used by Rolex and other brands, as well as a revived Zenith!)
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( Charles Vermot, the rebel at Zenith who refused to let a legend die…defying 1970s orders from corporate to discard and destroy, he hid the tooling and plans for the El Primero until a day it could rise again.
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And speaking of the Rolex Daytona, as most know, it was a modified, downshifted version of Zenith’s El Primero that would power the 5-digit generation of that model, before Rolex developed their own purely in-house vertical clutch chronograph caliber some years later…but that is its own story, for another time. Because right up there with such chronograph legends as the Omega Speedmaster and the Rolex Daytona, is the legendary “ El Primero” - two words whose intonation immediately invokes a mechanism of the highest sophistication, constructive quality, and notable precision, the last in particular not due in any small part to a then-unheard of 36,000 vph balance frequency, enabling the chronograph to time intervals to the 10th of a second. And when I say watches, I mean chronographs in particular. Although bearing the minor peculiarity of a name whom lay audiences would all too often confuse for a well-known American electronics company (who, ironically, would come to acquire said watch brand for a time), the distinguished house of Zenith from Le Locle in Switzerland has every right to the esteem it has earned from collectors and lovers of fine watches.