Guided By The Stars

Through every twist in its storied journey, Zenith, which marks its 160th anniversary this year, has stayed true to its pursuit of precision, performance, and progressive watchmaking.

- Alvin Wong

Zenith's long and winding path in the unforgiving world of high-end watchmaking isn't for the faint of heart. From the rise of battery-powered quartz watches in the 1970s that nearly wiped out its business, to shifts in ownership that demanded delicate—and often daring—course corrections, the brand's 160-year journey is a story of resilience, vision, and the people who kept faith in its potential for greatness.

Watch historians will point you to someone like Zenith engineer Charles Vermot. Vermot helped develop the groundbreaking El Primero in 1969—the world’s first fully integrated, high-frequency automatic chronograph—and later saved it from extinction. When Zenith’s then US-based owners ordered its tools and plans to be scrapped in favour of quartz technology, Vermot secretly hid them in an attic. When mechanical watchmaking returned to favour in the late 1970s, and Zenith resumed production of the El Primero, his quiet rebellion proved vital to the company’s survival and subsequent ascent.

Go back even further and you'll meet Georges Favre-Jacot, who founded the Zenith manufacture in 1865. In an age when watchmaking was fragmented among home-based craftsmen, Favre-Jacot introduced an industrialised, vertical manufacturing system—bringing every step of production, from design to quality control, under one roof.