The base of the dial is an eye-catching bronze fumé dial, with a white minute track and tach-o-metre scale, which sits on the lower section of the pie-pan dial. At 9 o’clock is the running seconds, with accumulated minutes at 3 and recorded hours down at 6 o’clock’. The A385 Revival features stark white chronograph registers, with the sub dial at 6 o’clock noticeably smaller than those that sit pride of place at 3 and 9 o’clock. For this Chronomaster Revival piece, Zenith sought to recreate the same warm tones and gradient effect, almost indistinguishable from the original with its red chronograph central second hand and silvery-white chronograph counters. What made the A385 truly standout was its smoked brown gradient dial with a vignette effect that blackens towards the edges and provides a striking sense of visual depth, as if the dial was domed. The A386, the A384 and of course the model that is the basis for this revival, the A385. While there is a debate on who was first, there’s no doubt that Zenith were first to announce the El Primero, with three different references. However, there were a couple of silent watch manufactures working on this advance too: in the Far East was Seiko, who were busy working on their own version and then there was the company from Le Locle Zenith. There were of course a few companies that shared an interest in claiming this technological breakthrough: Heuer/Buren-Hamilton/Breitling. During the early 1960s there was a race on to see who could create the world’s first self-winding (automatic) chronograph. The El Primero is a legend within its own right but there is a much debated story behind it. It was only as recently as the 1960s that there was a push to invent an automatic chronograph and while Zenith can be considered the first, it wasn’t quite that straight forward. I’ve previously mentioned before that chronographs have been around since the 19 th century, but it wasn’t that long ago that automatic chronographs were introduced.
A few weeks ago, Zenith introduced one of their latest re-edition timepieces and luckily for us, we were able to get our hands on an example to get up close and personal to see if this recreated El Primero was all we expected it to be? As you know, the Zenith El Primero is quite simply one of the most important chronographs in watchmaking history.
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