The original A385 was one of three rather different-looking designs to first carry the El Primero, but its blocky tonneau shape and smoked brown dial was probably the most “1969” of them all. In the other two corners, Seiko in Japan and an alliance between Heuer-Leonidas (as Tag Heuer was then called), Breitling, and Hamilton both were pipped to the post by a Zenith press conference in Geneva in January 1969. At least it was the first one let out of the bag, hence the name. More crucially, however, it was also the first automatic chronograph, the victor in a triangular horological equivalent of the space race. The El Primero was a groundbreaking movement for watch nerds when it first surfaced in early 1969 for a number of reasons, not least being the 36,000 semi-oscillations per hour that made it significantly more accurate than most production watches of the time. In addition to the groundbreaking El Primero movement, the A385’s brown gradient dial delivers a very "1969" vibe. But arguably none of them are as mind-bendingly faithful to the original inspiration than the Chronomaster Revival A385, out now. Since 2019, Zenith has made much of the 50th anniversary of its groundbreaking El Primero movement and has produced a number of nuts-and-bolts rebuilds, redesigns, or updates of the iconic watches that first carried it. But what happens when the movement is the most famous thing about a watch? While we are all easily smitten by riffs on iconic watches, precise recreations down to the nth degree are often stymied by the need to modernize in the process, like using a more modern in-house movement or supersizing a watch to suit modern tastes for bigness. The recreation of vintage-inspired watches from an illustrious back catalog of designs has become an accepted, if sometimes overused, industry practice for watch brands-namely those with the right history-to create “newness.” Or maybe that should be “oldness.” Whatever. Welcome to Dialed In, Esquire's weekly column bringing you horological happenings and the most essential news from the watch world since March 2020.
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