WATCHES & JEWELLERY
platinum wristwatch has a calendar that does not require manual correction until 2100. This complication is helpful, but nothing horologically unusual. However, its outstanding character is its style of gear shift in caliber 3610. Alternatively, the manual wind movement assembled from 480 parts works quickly or slowly. The smaller duo of balance and balance spring oscillates on the wrist with four Hertz. This high frequency provides high precision for about four days. For standby mode when stored, press the pushbutton at “8”. The complex mechanism shifts down about four gears via a differential gearbox, and the larger gear regulator immediately starts working. According to the motto “that which runs long, does so slowly,” it oscillates with only 1.2 Hertz. At this snail’s pace, the microcosm lasted for a good 70 days. Nevertheless, it continues the power-saving calender mechanism punctually at midnight. However, in the energy-saving mode this exquisite Geneva seal timepiece should lie flat. “EL PRIMERO” IS CELEBRATING ITS BIRTHDAY “El Primero” means nothing other than “The First”. Zenith presented it in 1969 as the world’s first chronograph with ball bearing rotor, ratchet wheel control, horizontal clutch and five Hertz balance frequency. Since then, it has been the movement from that time that has become indispensable. Its 50th birthday brings lovers a sumptuous case, filled with three timekeepers. One of them is a steel reissue of the first “El Primero” with a multicolored dial. Furthermore, there is the COSC-certified “Chronomaster El Primero” with fundamentally identical, but a technically optimized caliber 3600 and steel housing. The third one, in titanium, is ticking with two frequencies: five and fifty hertz. The slower balance is responsible for the time display; the faster one allows stops to the hundredth of a second. This watch is called “El Primero 21”. There is also room for a fourth piece with thousandths of a second stopping accuracy, which Zenith will introduce within the next few years and will then be available as an option. Under the hinged lid there is still a kind of watchmaker’s workbench with lamp and magnifying glass. A small tool clamps the tension spring of the hand-wound movement provided as an showpiece.
A. Lange & Söhne: Lange 1
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