Blued screws, brushed cams, and that massive rotor are at play to direct your sight away from the other areas – but the equation adds up more to the El Primero being true to itself than it grandstanding as an exercise in fine watchmaking.In 1969, Zenith changed the history of watchmaking with the invention of the legendary El Primero, enabling short-time measurements accurate to the nearest 1/10th of a second. The El Primero 400 is not shy about displaying rather plain looking surfaces: the large and imminently visible area behind the two chronograph runner gears, as well as the surface behind and around the balance wheel both stayed plain, with rough edges also on show.
Comparing this Zenith El Primero to some other movements is like comparing a 4.0 liter flat six from a 911 to a roaring V12 from a Lamborghini: one was designed to work tirelessly, rain or shine, while the other is rather more delicate, finicky, and impresses in a more exotic way. While the El Primero looks very impressive at first, one has to bear in mind that it was designed to be a tool, a device, a workhorse movement – and upon closer inspection, that shows. Once you look behind the rotor, machine-finished parts of very high quality are revealed. The large, skeletonized automatic rotor runs on seven ball bearings, and sports a skeletonized Zenith star logo in its center, along with wide Geneva striping and some bold “Zenith El Primero Manufacture Le Locle” scripts engraved. Luckily, the Zenith El Primero Original 1969 comes with a sapphire crystal case-back, exposing the strikingly beautiful and indeed very technical-looking movement inside. And yet, as briefly discussed above, the complexity of this “base” movement is already truly remarkable. Over the years, Zenith has modified the El Primero in countless ways, adding complex calendars and even gimbal-suspended escapements (hands-on here) to it. Incidentally, 5 Hertz may just be the perfect frequency, as the motion of the seconds hands is remarkably smooth – but not so much to imply an electrical movement underneath, as the small jumps are still visually present. El Primero Original 1969 and Nikon D810.Ī post shared by David on at 10:29am PDTįurthermore, because the balance wheel ticks 10 times – as opposed to the much more common 8, or sometimes only 6 or 5 times, encountered in most other watches – the seconds hands advance in a visually smoother way, with an almost perfectly fluid, sweeping motion. Imagine that this happens every single minute when you're wearing the watch and you're not even aware 99% of the time. Wait for the reflection! Love the quality of execution, even at this level and when viewed so up close - macros are unkind but this is beautiful.
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