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Thread: Five Things

  1. #21
    Hangaround member Fantasio's Avatar
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    Hey, what??? Was it Invicta after all?

    Quote Originally Posted by geoffbot View Post
    This is a lie, for the record.

    Sent from Maxwell Smart's shoe.

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  3. #22
    Moderator - Central tribe125's Avatar
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    • Rolex didn’t make the first self-winding wristwatch. There had been various (and mostly impractical) inventions dating back to the pocket watches of the eighteenth century, but the first automatic wristwatch in regular production was the work of John Harwood, an English watchmaker. The watch was manufactured by Fortis and went on sale in 1929. Rolex later had to apologise for describing their ‘Perpetual’ as the first self-winding wristwatch. Rolex was, however, the first to incorporate the 360° rotor we know today. Rolex’s apology appeared in newspapers, acknowledging the omission of the word ‘rotor’ from their advertisement. A subsequent advert showed three pioneers of the self-winding watch - Abram-Louis Perrelet, John Harwood and Rolex. Some people still omit the word ‘rotor’ when listing Rolex’s achievements, but not Rolex.

    • Watches were egg-shaped until King Charles II invented the waistcoat. Watches became flatter to fit waistcoat pockets, and the new style was partly responsible for the dominance of English watchmaking in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

    • Most Swiss watches are assembled in Switzerland rather than made in Switzerland. It is hard to say at which price point ‘made’ would be the more accurate term (and it may not always be a matter of price), but it is likely that ‘made’ is more or less synonymous with ‘expensive’.

    • It is not entirely true to say that the rise of the Swiss watch industry led to the decline of the English watch industry. English watchmakers refused to consider mechanisation, believing that quality would be compromised. And maybe they were being a bit snooty about the status of their craft.

    • It took a year for George Daniels and the Swatch Group to agree the terms of Omega using his co-axial movement. One of the sticking points was that Swatch didn’t want Daniels to use his movement in his own watches. George Daniels made twenty-seven watches in his lifetime.

  4. #23
    Moderator - Central tribe125's Avatar
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    • Nobody knows who made the first wristwatch, but it would have been made for a woman. Queen Elizabeth had an ‘arm watch’ in 1571. Abraham-Louis Breguet made a wristwatch for the Queen of Naples in 1810. Countess Koscowicz of Hungary had a Patek Philippe wristwatch in 1868. German naval officers had purpose-made wristwatches in 1880. The Cartier Santos-Dumont of 1904 was the first to be a commercial success, but it wasn’t the first. Generally, wristwatches were regarded as effeminate until they were used in war, and were seen on the wrists of former military officers returning from World War I. Rather than having a start date, wristwatches emerged.

    • You wouldn’t think the minute hand needed to be invented, but it was, in 1676 by English clock and watch maker Daniel Quare. Actually, this is in dispute because Christiaan Huygens drew a diagram of something similar three years earlier.

    • Even though he started out in the age of the pocket watch, Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf believed there would be a more profitable future in wristwatches. Pocket watches were handed down from one generation to the next, but wristwatches would be fashion items, with owners wanting two or three. Whereas Patek Philippe, a hundred years later...

    • The Zenith El Primero shouldn’t exist - and neither, probably, should Zenith. In 1971 the company was bought by the Zenith Radio Corporation of Chicago who saw no future in mechanical watches. They ordered that the machinery be broken up and sold for scrap. Charles Vermot, chief of ébauches production, couldn’t bring himself to do it. Working secretly in the evenings, he dismantled the El Primero machinery, some parts weighing more than a ton, and hid it in the attic. He compiled a manual showing how it could be reconstructed and how it worked. Ten years later, Rolex wanted to modernise the Daytona with an automatic movement. Zenith was back under Swiss control and Charles Vermot revealed his secret. In the following decades Zenith made more movements than watches, almost certainly saving the company.

    • Nicolas Hayek, saviour of the Swiss watch industry, was initially tasked with closing it down. There’s a bit more to it than that, but it’s broadly true.

  5. #24
    El bot. geoffbot's Avatar
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    Very interesting indeed Alan. Keep em coming!
    Follow IWL on instagram! https://instagram.com/iwatchleague

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  7. #25
    Ich bin ein Ebeler! WWII70's Avatar
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    Five Things

    Quote Originally Posted by tribe125 View Post
    • The Zenith El Primero shouldn’t exist - and neither, probably, should Zenith. In 1971 the company was bought by the Zenith Radio Corporation of Chicago who saw no future in mechanical watches. They ordered that the machinery be broken up and sold for scrap. Charles Vermot, chief of ébauches production, couldn’t bring himself to do it. Working secretly in the evenings, he dismantled the El Primero machinery, some parts weighing more than a ton, and hid it in the attic. He compiled a manual showing how it could be reconstructed and how it worked. Ten years later, Rolex wanted to modernise the Daytona with an automatic movement. Zenith was back under Swiss control and Charles Vermot revealed his secret. In the following decades Zenith made more movements than watches, almost certainly saving the company.
    Based on Rick Denney’s excellent research, http://forums.watchuseek.com/#/topics/1002005, it was Pierre-Alain Blum of Ebel who requested reassembly of the El Primero tooling to manufacture automatic chronograph movements for the Ebel Chronosport.


    This predates Rolex’s use of the El Primero in Daytonas by a few years. Interestingly, Rolex’s sales volume dominated the supply of El Primeros, forcing Ebel to find another source for movements. This lead directly to Blum’s decision to manufacture movements at Ebel internally- Cal 137, 139, 240, 245 and 288 family of movements.



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    Last edited by WWII70; Oct 29, 2017 at 01:11 PM.
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  9. #26
    Moderator - Central tribe125's Avatar
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    That’s interesting, but without digging into it myself I note that he says Ebel may have been using old stock rather than reconstructed movements. I can’t now remember what Vermot himself said, but there’s a video interview of him talking about it somewhere.

  10. #27
    Yous' Boat.


    Quote Originally Posted by Raza View Post
    Which boat?

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  12. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by tribe125 View Post
    Most Swiss watches are assembled in Switzerland rather than made in Switzerland. It is hard to say at which price point ‘made’ would be the more accurate term (and it may not always be a matter of price), but it is likely that ‘made’ is more or less synonymous with ‘expensive’.
    I saw an interview with Hayek maybe a few years before he died, and he implied that for Swatch it was Longines and above that were almost entirely Swiss made. Looking at Swatch Group's corporate assests for case, dial, and hand manufacturing, that seems reasonable.

  13. #29
    Moderator - Central tribe125's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dimman View Post
    I saw an interview with Hayek maybe a few years before he died, and he implied that for Swatch it was Longines and above that were almost entirely Swiss made. Looking at Swatch Group's corporate assests for case, dial, and hand manufacturing, that seems reasonable.

    That sounds about right to me too, although it wouldn't surprise me if some Longines were and some weren't. It's quite a long way from Hydroconquest to Master Collection. And I could only guess at how far up the Swatch Group you need to go to get a Swiss bracelet.

    Hayek was pretty frank in his interviews and I've learnt a lot from them.

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  15. #30

    Five Things

    Quote Originally Posted by tribe125 View Post
    That’s interesting, but without digging into it myself I note that he says Ebel may have been using old stock rather than reconstructed movements. I can’t now remember what Vermot himself said, but there’s a video interview of him talking about it somewhere.
    The truth is somewhere in the middle.

    The first batch of Ebel Chronographs had a wave bracelet (making them a Sport Classique), and used Zenith 3019PHC ebauches. These were clearly from the stock of ebauches that Vermot hid along with the tooling. Vermot was retired by that time (he had started his career at Martel in 1936), and he came out of retirement only for that initial consultation. The Ebel Sport Classic Chronographs were sold starting in 1983 (I have an advertisement from a 1983 magazine). Ebel marked these as caliber 134, but they retained the Zenith caliber markings, so they can be identified.

    Zenith revised the tooling and restarted production based on Ebel's success, which had demonstrated a market. The first new movements were completed in 1986. That batch used a mix of old and new tooling and carried a caliber number of 40.0 (note the decimal point). Within a year, Zenith had fully retooled and the movements started being marked as caliber 400, which they mostly still are.

    Also in 1986, Ebel came out with the 1911 line, in celebration of the company's 75th anniversary. Ebel was riding high during that period, and was one of the most important Swiss companies. The 1911 link bracelet started appearing on Chronographs that year, and the catalogs describe the watch simply as "Chronograph". My Chronograph has a 1911 link bracelet and a caliber 40.0, which was only made in 1986.



    Ebel came out with the perpetual calendar chronograph in 1984 or so--it uses a Zenith base movement with a Dubois-Depraz module that Ebel integrated. Ebel named it the caliber 136, and it was still in the catalog even after Ebel was bought by LVMH in 1999--five years after Ebel replaced the Zenith movement with their own Lemania-based caliber 137 in their regular Chronographs.

    Rolex came out with the automatic Daytona in 1988. We don't know whether Zenith was already working with Rolex when they restarted production in 1985-1986, but very certainly Ebel used new Zenith movements at least two years before Rolex did. It is unlikely that Vermot had any involvement in the Rolex collaboration, at least near its conclusion.

    It should also be noted that the Rolex version was famously different from the 40.0 and 400 in a few key ways, not least that it had a slower beat rate. Had that requirement of Zenith's collaboration with Rolex driven Zenith's decision to restart production, I think it unlikely that we would have ever seen another 5-Hz El Primero. Note that Ebel did not especially emphasize the beat rate of the Zenith movement--it's not stated anywhere on the watch and didn't appear in the early catalogs. They were not committed to the beat rate of the Zenith movement. Had Ebel been riding Rolex's coat tails, later Ebel Chronographs would almost assuredly have had a beat rate of 28,800.

    Rick "some informed speculation, but not with regard to dates" Denney
    Last edited by Rdenney; Oct 30, 2017 at 04:11 PM.
    More than 500 characters worth of watches.

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