Opinion: In Praise Of The Central Minutes Chronograph

February 19, 2013

Sinn 140A Space Chronograph with SZ-01 movement The new Panerai Luminor Regatta Flyback (PAM00519) released at last months SIHH was one of the shows highlights for me. Whilesome disliked the use of color (I happen to like it) or the large size (its aPanerai, what do you expect?), what most appeals to me about this timepiece is itsuse of a central minutes counter for the chronograph. In fact, this watch isthe latest in a woefully short list of chronographs with this incredibly usefuland underused feature.I was having an online discussion about the central minuteschronograph hand with fellow watch writer?Miguel Seabra, and he called the function, a Columbus Egg. I had to look up this term andfound that it means a solution to a problem that seems simple or obvious after thefact. Whatever you call it, I'm baffled as to why more chronographs dont use this configuration. One answer may lie in the almost ubiquitous use of the Valjoux7750 in nearly all Swiss chronographs not developed in-house.By the time the self-winding chronograph emerged in 1969, the mechanical watch itself was about to be dealt a near-fatal blow bythe quartz movement. The Valjoux 7750 was introduced in 1972 and was usedthroughout the rest of the 70s in what mechanical chronographs were still beingsold. When the mechanical watch market rebounded in the late 90s, the trusty old 7750 was ready for action and everyone from IWC to Hamilton adapted it for use in theirchronographs. Sinn 142 Around the same time Valjoux introduced its iconicmovement, Lemania came up with its own self-winding chronograph, thecalibre 1340. The 1340 was used in various iterations by Lemanias SSIHsiblings, OMEGA and Tissot, in some Seamasters, Speedmasters, and Navigators. This chronograph featured the useful central minutes chronographcounter, typically styled with an airplane tip in a brighter color to distinguishit from the seconds hand. At a glance, reading off elapsed time is incrediblyintuitive since the eye recognizes the position of the minutes hand on the dialimmediately, as opposed to reading a 30-minute subdial, on which a hand mustmake two revolutions before an hour is ticked off. But for its era, not to mention competing with cheaper quartz movements, the Lemania 1340 became prohibitivelyexpensive to produce. So Lemania succeeded it with the well-known calibre 5100,which introduced nylon parts to keep costs down. The 5100 movement was widelyadopted for use by everyone from Sinn and Tutima to Fortis and Heuer. It also becamethe accepted mechanical chronograph for military use, given its relativerobustness and resistance to shocks. It remains the most famous of the centralminutes chronographs, instantly recognizable with its (typically) orange airplanehand and upper 24-hour subdial.Sadly, Lemania stopped providing the 5100 to non-Swatch companies (with a fewexceptions for military contracts) in the early 2000s. And since Swatch lacked a watch that usedit, the 5100 has effectively disappeared from the new watch market. Chronograph lovers have lamented this loss, but cries for a central minutes chronograph movement havelargely fallen on deaf ears. There have been a few instances ofcobbled-together attempts, like TAG Heuers Calibre 60,which is actually an ETA 2892 with a Dubois-Dupraz module grafted on top. TheCalibre 60 was used to great effect in the short-lived Aquagraph dive watch,where it was perfect for tracking elapsed dive or decompression times. Panerai Luminor 1950 3 Days Regatta Chrono Flyback Titanio (PAM00526) Now that the Swatch Group is limiting sale of even theValjoux 7750 to competitive brands, companies have been forced to develop theirown in-house chronograph movements and weve seen some fresh, innovativeresults. Most notably, IWC developed its 8936X-series chrono, which moves bothhours and minutes to a single clock-like subdial for easier elapsed timereading. OMEGA, though a Swatch Group company, introduced its own new co-axial calibre9300 with the same subdial arrangement as IWCs. Sinn recently developed its SZ-01, which is an extensivemodification of the 7750 to mimic the function and appearance of the Lemania5100, which the brand used successfully for many years. The SZ-01 is usedin Sinns new limited edition 140A Space Chronograph and its vaunted EZM-10.And now, of course, Panerai has introduced the P9100/R in its 2013 Regattanovelty.Maybe Im showing my age, and degraded eyesight, but as muchas I love chronographs, Im tired of squinting at a tiny subdial to read myminutes. So is this recent resurfacing of some central minute counterchronographs a sign of things to come? As more brands continue todevelop their own movements and the industry continues to drive innovation, I certainly hope so.Sinn 142 via Analog/Shift