BRONZE: A METAL WITH CHARACTER

The brand from Le Locle takes inspiration from its long love story with the sky to design a big chronograph combining bronze and blue, and with the display driven by the legendary El Primero movement.

Since it was founded, Zenith has celebrated the rise of aeronautics by creating measuring instruments specially designed for pilots. When the Frenchman Louis Blériot (1872-1936), on board his Blériot XI, completed the very first flight across the English Channel in 37 minutes on 25 July 1909, he was wearing a wrist watch made by the brand from Le Locle. This long love story between Zenith and aeroplanes is embodied in the Pilot collection, which has just been joined by the Pilot Type 20 Extra Special Chronograph Bronze Blue Dial model, introduced this year at Baselworld.

On the midnight blue matt dial, the time display is perfectly readable at a glance, with its large Arabic figures and the big cathedral-type hands coated in white Super-LumiNova® with green luminescence. The second scale runs discreetly round the outside of the dial. The hour and minute hands are in the centre and the running seconds in a counter at 9 o’clock. The chronograph seconds track the large central second hand and the minutes are counted up in a totaliser at 3 o’clock.

The Type 20 Extra Special Chronograph Bronze Blue Dial is driven by a famous self-winding movement, the calibre El Primero 4069, which runs at 36,000 vibrations an hour (5Hz) and provides a power reserve of 50 hours.

Price: 7,400 CHF zenith.com

By Sharmila Bertin