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Zenith is celebrating its 150th anniversary. And with this anniversary comes the memory back of their possibly most famous movement which is also considered to be the first automatic chronograph movement introduced in 1969. Yes, I am aware of all debates about who created the first automatic chronograph movement, and for those who want to go in depth, you find a good read over here.
Zenith’s history was all but smooth. While Zenith is now mostly known among collectors due to its El Primero automatic chronograph movement, history nearly lead to the disappearance and destruction of this movement.
Zenith was bought by Zenith Radio company who later became Zenith Radion corporation from Illinois, USA, in 1972. In 1975 they ordered the stop of production of mechanical movements. And this would have been the end of the El Primero wouldn’t there have been one man with a heart: Monsieur Vermot.
Mister Vermot made a decision to hide all the necessary parts to construct the El Primero movement under the roof of the manufacture building. For quite some time, nobody knew that he did it and where it was hidden despite the large amount of machine parts which were stocked.
The attic is full with machine parts. And it is huge. It seems that Vermot brought everything there to evade the destruction. And this helped later on to keep making the El Primero automatic chronograph movement which may be considered to be one of the most famous chronograph movements to date.
This story is probably one of the less known stories, however, Zenith dedicated several watches to Mister Vermot. They are characterized by blue dials. I will write about these timepieces later.
Like back then in the 80s, Zenith is sailing through troubled waters, largely due to past policies by its former CEO Mister Nataf who focused his efforts to much on models that would not sell including the Defy. But not only. Currently, the new CEO is trying to bring Zenith back to live with interesting vintage inspired timepieces as we could see in Baselworld. Together with Mister Biver who is known for his marketing genius and sense of what goes and what doesn’t, I hope that Zenith will pull the right strings and move up again. The company has such a rich history and in the world of vintage collectors Zenith is very respected. It would be time that the current company catches up with this past.