Zenith

Brand history

Founded 1865 in Le Locle by Georges Favre-Jacot. The El Primero (1969) is one of the three competing automatic-chronograph caliber launches of that year and is universally acknowledged as the most-advanced of the three — high-frequency (36,000 vph), column-wheel, and continuously in production for over half a century. The caliber survived the 1970s quartz crisis when an in-house engineer hid the tooling rather than scrap it.