#reference.grail-watch.com

Naoya Hida & Co. is an independent watch atelier in Tokyo producing a small number of classically-inspired watches in annual batches. Each model uses a customized movement based on the ETA 7750 automatic chronograph ebauche, a surprising choice because Hida's watches are neither automatic nor chronographs!

There is very little coverage of Landeron, the factory of Charles Hahn that produced many high-end column wheel movements before introducing the world to cam switching. For this reason, I have recently added most of the classic Landeron chronograph movements to the Grail Watch Reference database.

This weekend I added a Zenith's Elite family of movements to the site. These are an important series of modern automatic movements yet are not well-understood or documented. Introduced in 1994, the Elite series gave Zenith a compact movement that was robust, reliable, and could support complications across a wide range of watches. The series was almost retired in 2015 but has been given a new lease on life and is today one of two main movement lines from Zenith, along with the famous El Prime...

When ETA names a movement, they usually use the last digit or two to signify added functions, then a numeral after a dash to indicate an update. Cal. 2892-2 was an update to Cal. 2892, and that movement added a date complication to Cal. 2890. But this isn't how it works for ETA's "Travel Time Trio", Cal. 2893-1, 2893-2, and 2893-3. These were introduced together in 1992 and represent variations on one complication rather than updates.

One of my goals with Grail Watch Reference is to use primary sources to develop the best information possible. Although many aspects of horology are widely reported as truth, we can not completely rely on these stories: There's just too much folklore out there! To illustrate, I will walk through my process of verifying the timeline of one of today's top movements, ETA's 2892A2.

Continuing my research into the Sellita movements, I looked into the background of the SW300 and SW400 movements, as well as the compact SW100 and SW1000. Leveraging the Sellita documentation and website, I was able to uncover the launch chronology of these movements as well as lots of technical details. I was surprised to learn how similar most of the company's movements are to each other.

I did a little research over the weekend into one of the top movement producers in Switzerland, Sellita. It can be difficult to find details on under-the-radar companies like Sellita - they didn't exhibit at industry fairs and "have no particular need to advertise," according to a 2014 Europa Star article. They just quietly built over a million watch movements per year, leveraging a network of subsidiaries and suppliers in Switzerland, Germany, and elsewhere.

One of the more popular movements in the history of horology, the high-end Valjoux 23/72 chronograph family is vast and confusing. It was in production for many decades (1916 through 1974, by reckoning) and there are over two dozen different related movements. I've been working to get my head around these for years, and this site has given me a platform for that work!