BREITLING 18K Yellow Gold CHRONO-MATIC 1969s

The watch presented here is the Breitling Chrono-Matic Ref.2116, powered by Caliber 11, the movement announced in March 1969 as the world's first automatic chronograph. It is said that only 100 pieces were made in 18K solid gold, and they were imported from Switzerland to France in a small lot.

Breitling already had a place in the story of spaceflight. On the Aurora 7 mission (Mercury-Atlas 7), a flight that ran into trouble, Scott Carpenter wore a Breitling on his wrist. That chapter ended abruptly, but in March 1969 Willy Breitling opened a new one by bringing the first automatic chronograph to market.

The race to be first was close. In the same year Zenith presented the high-beat Caliber 3019, the El Primero, running at 36,000 vph, and Seiko released the Caliber 6139, an automatic chronograph with date. The movement generally credited as the first in practice is Caliber 11, developed jointly by Heuer, Breitling, Dubois-Dépraz and Hamilton-Büren.

The project began with Jack Heuer and grew, with Breitling at its center, into an effort that drew in much of the Swiss watch industry. The cost of development was enormous. Repaying it, then absorbing the quartz crisis and the oil shock, eventually took the company out of the Breitling family's hands and into those of the Schneider family. The Chrono-Matic models are the result of that struggle, and behind them lies the hard personal story of Willy Breitling himself.

The case is thick 18K solid gold, close to a monocoque construction, a design used on only a few Chrono-Matic models. Its weight is the first thing noticed when the watch is picked up. The dial belongs clearly to its time. From the late 1960s, makers began using bold primary colours to make chronograph dials easier to read, and this one pairs a champagne dial with navy registers and an orange central chronograph hand, the same kind of accent seen on the Omega Flightmaster and the Rolex Explorer II.

It is currently running at around +15 seconds a day, and the chronograph works fully. For anyone drawn to the story of the first automatic chronograph, this is an exceptional piece to own.

- wrist size in our picture is 17cm circumference -