One path to clearing confusion is to say that Zenith produced the very first Swiss-made, fully integrated automatic chronograph - the El Primero. No matter how you frame the discussion, the debate over who created the first automatic chronograph is a heated one.
And then there was the dark horse from Le Locle: Zenith. In the Far East, Seiko was working on its own version. The main players were a consortium of companies with mutual interests: Heuer, Buren-Hamilton, Breitling and Dubois-Depraz. While the Americans and Russians were racing to put men into space, a different sort of race was going on between watch companies sprinting toward the milestone of the first self-winding, or automatic, chronograph.
Imagine a time before quartz watches, when the technology of timekeeping was still springs and gears made in workshops in the Swiss mountains. Welcome to Watches You Should Know, a biweekly column highlighting important or little-known watches with interesting backstories and unexpected influence.
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