Once you look behind the rotor, machine-finished parts of very high quality are revealed. The large, skeletonized automatic rotor runs on seven ball bearings, and sports a skeletonized Zenith star logo in its center, along with wide Geneva striping and some bold “Zenith El Primero Manufacture Le Locle” scripts engraved. Luckily, the Zenith El Primero Original 1969 comes with a sapphire crystal case-back, exposing the strikingly beautiful and indeed very technical-looking movement inside. And yet, as briefly discussed above, the complexity of this “base” movement is already truly remarkable. Over the years, Zenith has modified the El Primero in countless ways, adding complex calendars and even gimbal-suspended escapements (hands-on here) to it. Incidentally, 5 Hertz may just be the perfect frequency, as the motion of the seconds hands is remarkably smooth – but not so much to imply an electrical movement underneath, as the small jumps are still visually present. El Primero Original 1969 and Nikon D810.Ī post shared by David on at 10:29am PDTįurthermore, because the balance wheel ticks 10 times – as opposed to the much more common 8, or sometimes only 6 or 5 times, encountered in most other watches – the seconds hands advance in a visually smoother way, with an almost perfectly fluid, sweeping motion.

Imagine that this happens every single minute when you're wearing the watch and you're not even aware 99% of the time.

Wait for the reflection! Love the quality of execution, even at this level and when viewed so up close - macros are unkind but this is beautiful.

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