It’s amusing to think that the now iconic watch had such a tepid release into the world as unfortunately, the bad luck didn’t stop there. Despite the technical achievement of the El Primero movement, only a handful of regional and local newspapers attended a press conference in January, 1969 that Zenith held to announce their watches. The first prototypes weren’t completed until 1968 and were met with a lukewarm response despite their innovation. The manufacturer had planned for a 1965 release to celebrate the centenary of the brand, but 1965 came and went as development slowed.

Zenith’s ambition was met with constant delays. To compensate for the increased power usage and daily wear and tear, Zenith increased the power reserve to 50 hours and developed their own longer lasting lubricant. The reason Zenith wanted such a high rate that it allowed the chronograph second hand to sweep exceptionally smoothly and was accurate to within 1/10th of a second. But these were just time and date movements and no-one had yet attempt to make a chronograph that beat at such a high rate. At the time, 18,000bph was the standard rate for movements to beat at, although there was a few select movements from Seiko that ran at 26,000bph and 36,000bph.

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