Zenith (watchmaker)

Zenith
Wholly owned subsidiary
Industry Luxury Watches
Founded Le Locle, Neuchâtel, Switzerland 1865
Founder Georges Favre-Jacot
Headquarters Le Locle,
Switzerland
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Jean-Claude Biver (Interim CEO)
Parent LVMH
Website zenith-watches.com

Zenith SA is a Swiss luxury watchmaker. The company was started in 1865 by Georges Favre-Jacot at the age of 22, in Le Locle in the canton of Neuchâtel.[1] Zenith was purchased by LVMH in November 1999, becoming one of several brands in its watch and jewellery division. Jean-Claude Biver became Interim CEO in 2017, replacing CEO Aldo Magada, who had replaced Jean-Frédéric Dufour in 2014.[2] Zenith is one of the Swiss watch manufacturers that still produce their own movements in-house.

El Primero

The El Primero calibre, which was first released in 1969 and is still produced today, was one of the first automatic chronograph movements and has a frequency of 36,000 alternations per hour (5 Hz). Notably, Zenith's "El Primero" movement was used by Rolex from 1988 to 2000 for the Rolex Daytona chronograph. The "El Primero" movement's high rate allows a resolution of ​1⁄10 of a second and a potential for greater positional accuracy over the more common standard frequency of 28,800 alternations per hour (4 Hz).[3] The El Primero was honoured with a 2012 release of the El Primero Stratos Flyback Striking 10th, limited to 1,969 pieces (in honour of the original 1969 release date), that housed the same 36,000 vph movement and a sub-dial measuring in tenths of a second to make a complete rotation every ten seconds.[4]

Georges Favre-Jacot

Favre-Jacot was born 1843 and died 1917.[5] He was an apprentice within the watchmaking industry while still a youth.[6] Favre-Jacot at some time requested that a house be built for himself at Le Locle, by the architect Le Corbusier.[7] He was also closely involved with another prominent architect, named Alphonse Laverrière. His relationship with this latter architect was the source of influence upon the Werkbund movement. The two men collaborated with a shared artistic vision of the nature of production, to the extent to which they themselves somewhat reformed the artistic situation within francophone Switzerland at the time.[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Georges Favre-Jacot". Zenith International. Retrieved 2015-01-12.
  2. ↑ http://en.worldtempus.com/article/industry-news/zenith-aldo-magada-new-ceo-1577611
  3. ↑ "The Stainless-Steel Zenith El Primero Chronomaster". timezone.com. Archived from the original on 2012-07-02. Retrieved 2009-04-16.
  4. ↑ "Best Watches of 2012: Zenith El Primero Stratos Flyback Striking 10th". R.G. Holland. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
  5. ↑ J. Birksted. Le Corbusier and the Occult. MIT Press 2009, 405 pages, ISBN 0262026481. Retrieved 2015-07-14. templatestyles stripmarker in |publisher= at position 28 (help)
  6. 1 2 Zenith Watches. Georges Favre-Jacot. Zenith Watches. Retrieved 2015-07-15.
  7. ↑ A. Flint - sa=X&ved=0CB8Q6AEwADgKahUKEwicv8LD6dzGAhVCWBQKHd5WC7w#v=onepage&q=Georges%20Favre-Jacot&f=false Modern Man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of Tomorrow Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 4 Nov 2014, 256 pages, ISBN 0544262220 [Retrieved 2015-07-15]

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