KEEPING TRACK OF TIME — AUTOMATIC CHRONOGRAPHS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

In 1969, the race to develop the first automatic chronograph came to a conclusion when three great calibres were introduced to great fanfare. The watch industry’s revival in the ’80s and ’90s, while at a steady pace, emphasised movement development through a handful of firms which survived the Quartz Crisis and continued to pursue mechanical watchmaking. While ebauchés helped restore the Swiss watch industry, the industry became overly reliant on these firms rather than innovating and developing their own movements, something that transformed when The Swatch Group announced it intended to steadily reduce the sale of blank movements to other watchmakers so that it could focus on its own brands.

That started a chain reaction among the numerous watch brands across the industry to build their own movements, verticalise their own production and create individual signatures for themselves, not merely on a watch’s external features but within as well.

Ask most watch movement makers how challenging it is to construct a chronograph, and they will frequently compare it to any high watchmaking complication in its complexity. The difficulties of creating them are multi-fold, ranging from the amount of power that it needs to be able to handle during a chronograph reset to the stress of engaging gears, the starting ‘bounce’ of the chronograph seconds hand and even the effect a running chronograph has