Most people consider the Longines of today to be a shell of its former self. In large part, I agree. While I certainly don't look down on a modern Longines owner, it's hard to argue that the movement technology and design they pioneered in the 19th and early 20th century (can anyone say 13ZN??) truly had a much larger impact to the watch world than today's interestingly designed, but re-cased ebauche movements. One of the last hurrah's for the Longines of old was most certainly the Ultra-Chron movement. Built and sold during a period where a certain new technology looked to supplant the necessity of a finely designed mechanical movement: Quartz. Quartz brought with it a new degree of accuracy and precision. It lacked soul, it lacked passion, but when it came to the core competency of time-telling, it was undoubtedly king. Longines positioned the Ultra-Chron as it's high-beat, super accurate movement. In fact, in advertising from the late 60's/early 70's, they guaranteed the movement to be accurate to within 1 minute a month (about 2 seconds a day). you could even argue that the coil logo used for the Ultra-Chron, that resembles an electrical coil was somewhat of an "Eff you" to the quartz movement.
I am lucky enough to own 3 amazing examples of Ultra-Chrons (Thanks to HudsonTime). Here's one, somewhat fittingly positioned with modern tech. It's an outlier juxtaposed to microchipped electronic devices, but oddly enough, not an outlier at the same time.
Cool post with insight into the high beat last ditch effort to stay relevant, But I wonder where the Seiko high beat and Zodiac SST 3600 fit in as they were locked in a head to head with a couple of brands when it was far from clear the quartz would surpass them In a fight for the most beats per second
. I have a Zodiac SST3600 watch from a semi famous Austrian designer Kurt Wirth, he got the watch after driving 100.000km in his volvo as inscribed on the back (still in need of a strap and a new crystal gasket) That is why I am curious.
Wonderfully written on the delicate perspectives of back then . We are honored to have you man first and foremost. Love this write up man . It’s quite interesting. The timing of el primero and ultra Chron calibers both of which are still in my opinion some of the best engineered movements to this day in terms of time only and chronograph with no frills, stood test of time. Had they been released back to mechanical in 90s or early 60’s would have been much more sought after . Quartz age almost brought dark ages to mechanics and any release just around the corner or start of quartz with mechanical got annihilated with the true research put in. Thank you for sharing hobro