Zenith

About Zenith

Zenith is one of the few Swiss houses that has always made its own movements, and in 1969 it produced the El Primero — an integrated automatic chronograph beating at 36,000 vibrations per hour, fast enough to measure a tenth of a second. When quartz nearly killed the company, a watchmaker named Charles Vermot hid the El Primero tooling in an attic rather than scrap it, which is why the caliber still exists.

Signature models

The references that define the house — and the ones you are most likely to meet.

• Chronomaster El Primero
• Defy Skyline
• Defy Extreme
• Pilot Type 20
• Elite

What to look for

Details worth checking before you trust a dial. None of them certify authenticity on their own.

• A tenth-of-a-second chronograph scale and a seconds hand that sweeps in ten steps per second
• Tri-colour overlapping sub-dials on classic El Primero layouts — grey, light grey and blue
• The star emblem, and an 'El Primero' caliber number (400, 3600) on the movement
• Defy models use a starburst-faceted dial; the facets should catch light cleanly with no soft edges

Facts

• Rolex used the El Primero as the base for the automatic Daytona from 1988 until 2000.
• Zenith holds over 2,300 chronometry prizes — more than any other watch manufacturer.