Who Watches the Watchmen (Our Chit Chat Thread)

I think the Zenith is a nice looking watch myself. More balanced in some ways to the Daytona and has a good history back to one of the first auto chronographs in 1969, though personally I find the new one a nicer design than the vintage(nice change for me ). Zenith produced some very nice chronos before that too, first by buying in Martel movements and then buying the company itself to make them "in house"(Universal and a couple of others also used those movements).

Most Swiss houses avoided making chronos in house as they were an expensive prospect and it seems their expense and lack of utility/popularity among buyers up to around the 50/60's meant they outsourced to others, Martel, Valjoux. There were the cheaper cam operated movements too. About the only main Swiss brands who bothered with the complication were Longines, Omega and Breitling, particularly Longines as they were a halo range for them from early on and they were the first to produce a wrist specific chronograph movement. Outside Switzerland of course Seiko were in house too and brought a few innovations to the chronograph. Sometimes you read people saying oh well Rolex didn't make in house chronographs until recently and yep that's true, but neither did Heuer, or Patek or Breguet and AP and VC also bought in movements and IIRC JLC did similar. Heuer were obviously a chronograph watch company as a thing and made them popular, but even so the same Heuer flirted with insolvency from time to time. The Rolex Daytona famously sold in tiny numbers when it came out and price discounts were common. Most other brands produced them in small numbers because they don't seem to have been very popular among buyers. I suspect myself that maybe one reason was because until 69 they couldn't be had as automatics, so outside of the very early days when everything was hand wound and chronos were popular enough and niche market segments like pilots, they didn't really take off until they were also automatics(with the notable exception of the Omega Speedmaster. Though Apollo really helped there*). Rolex Daytonas started to shift in decent numbers in the 90's when they too went automatic with the Zenith movement.

Then again it's relatively recently, like the last couple of decades were "In house" meant anything to 99% of buyers or indeed brands. Hell in the very early days of the man's wristwatch in many markets it was more common to find the retailers name on the dial, the importers name on the case and any number of usually unbranded Swiss movements driving them.





*consider the NASA tests. Only four manufacturers came back to them, one was immediately discounted, the other two, Wittnauer and Rolex both used the same Valjoux movement and the Speedy, the "in house" movement won out. Now granted the call by NASA went out to US distributors(hence it was a Wittnauer, rather than a Longines) rather than the brand HQ's so there was a narrowing there, but these days NASA would have a gazillion more choices in the mix.

redlead wrote: »

Sinn actually bought the rights to make them back when Breitling were in trouble and so you can get close to identical ones made by them for a good bit lesser money. Of course I doubt the finishing would be as good

I's suspect the Sinn might actually be better bolted together, not necessarily more polished, but better overall. Breitling were in real trouble at that stage and corners were cut on watches from that period, while Sinn were trying to make a name for themselves.

That particular OysterQuartz is one you really don't see very often at all. In my humble, though it doesn't get the love because of the battery bit, the OysterQuartz is one of the finest designed and executed movements Rolex have ever made in their history. It was certainly far superior in fit and finish compared to their contemporary movements and in the very top tier of quartz movements ever made.