El Primero A386 Revival (2019 50th anniversary)

Zenith's 2019 A386 Revival is a small steel chronograph made to mark fifty years of the El Primero movement. It combines ordinary timekeeping with a stopwatch, inside a round 38 mm case on a black leather strap. Its white face and three differently colored counters reproduce one of the most recognizable arrangements from the original 1969 watches.

The El Primero mattered because it combined automatic winding with a high-frequency chronograph. The 2019 watch uses the later caliber 400, whose balance makes ten half-swings each second. That rhythm allows the stopwatch to divide a second into tenths, although its long central hand still takes a full minute to circle the dial.

The colors separate displays with different jobs. The pale counter on the left shows ordinary seconds. Blue at the right counts elapsed minutes, and the darker lower counter records elapsed hours. Their circles overlap, giving a busy mechanical display a distinctly graphic appearance. A red central hand supplies the stopwatch seconds.

The modern watch keeps the original diameter but adds sapphire over the face and a transparent back. The automatic movement can be seen from behind. It is a contemporary construction of the old design, not an untouched 1969 watch.

This exact steel version first came in an anniversary box with two other chronographs, in a run of fifty sets. Its black alligator strap has a rubber lining. Other revivals and later bracelet versions have their own references.

The later Chronomaster Original looks close, but its central stopwatch hand completes a circuit in ten seconds. On this A386 Revival, the hand moves at the conventional pace. The overlapping colors look familiar before that mechanical difference becomes apparent.