n January 10, 1969, Zenith and Movado announced the world’s most advanced watch movement. Called El Primero, it was the world’s first automatic chronograph and represented the best in mechanical watchmaking. But Zenith was sold to an unrelated American company of the same name just two years later, and was forced to cease production of mechanical watches and focus on quartz. This is the story of the watchmaker who saved the El Primero movement, the Swiss industrialist who saved Zenith, and the rising star that re-ignited watchmaking in Le Locle and beyond.

#3 El Primero and the Birth, Death, and Resurrection of Zenith. Listen now: