Citizen Challenge Timer “Bullhead” with 8110 movement.Īs mentioned, Citizen had the advantage of being able to build on what Seiko had already released. The former features a 30-minute chronograph register and the latter has an additional 12-hour register. Introduced in 1977 and running through 1980, the 81X0 consists of two calibers: the 8100 and the 8110. Citizen 81X0įinally, there’s the Citizen 81X0 family. The movement has a diameter of approximately 27mm and is only an astounding 6.4mm tall, which is significantly thinner than the 6139. The power reserve is approximately 42 hours and it cannot be hand wound or hacked. It also has 17 jewels and a day/date complication. Like its Suwa counterpart, the 701x beats at 21,600bph, has a central chronograph hand and lacks an active seconds hand. Seiko 7015 “Time Sonar” photo credit via pbase.Īs mentioned earlier, this was also the thinnest vertical clutch column wheel chronograph for a period of time, existing from 1970 through ’77. Finally, the 7018 was much like the Suwa 6139 with only a 30-minute register. The 70 both feature only a central chronograph hand with no additional registers for recording elapsed time. There are several notable variants within the 701x family. The most famous is the 7016 with the aforementioned stacked sub-dial. This makes reading the elapsed time harder, but it leaves the dial with a compact and clean design, one that was totally ingenious at the time. This means that there is one sub-dial for both the hour and minute hands counting off the elapsed time, versus the individual hour and minute sub-dials of its 6138 cousin. It has an additional flyback functionality (which allows the user to immediately restart the chronograph without having to first stop and reset) and some models featuring a unique stacked hour and minute chronograph register.
#HAUTE HOROLOGY BRANDS SERIES#
The 701X series is arguably the more technically advanced of the two vintage Seiko chronograph movement families. Peculiarly, this achievement was never marketed by Seiko nor given any mention in the official Seiko history, “A Journey in Time: The Remarkable Story of Seiko.” One fact that cannot be argued, however, was the Seiko was certainly the first Japanese watch company to produce and release an automatic chronograph. Alongside Zenith and the Chronomatic partnership, Seiko is widely acknowledged to be among the first companies (and some might even argue that Seiko was the first) to have an automatic chronograph watch out on the market. The 613X family has numerous claims to fame, particularly the 6139. Both variants lack hacking and the 6139 does not hand wind. The 6139 has 17 jewels, and the 6139 has 21 (and 23 for some of the rarer Japanese domestic market variants like the 6138-8000). Both lack an active running seconds and in terms of specs, they beat at 21,600bph and have a power reserve of 45 hours. The difference between the two movements is that the 6139 only has a 30-minute chronograph register, and the 6138 has an additional 12-hour register. There are two primary calibers: the earlier 6139 introduced in 1969 (and produced until approximately 1977), and the 6138 introduced a year later in 1970. I’ll begin with the 613x family from Seiko Suwa. In the first part of our series looking at Japanese chronograph movements, we’re going to do a basic overview of these three great movement families. The 81X0 is often overshadowed by Seiko’s offerings, but I believe that it is the more technically advanced of the group.
Not being the first to market, Citizen had three years to improve on what had come before. Citizen was not resting on its laurels, and in 1972 the firm released a range of automatic chronographs within the 81X0 family. Piguet released the 1185 chronograph in 1987.Īnd then there’s Citizen, Japan’s other horological powerhouse.
In 1970, Seiko Daini (read our history explaining the Suwa/Daini split here) came out with the 701X family of chronographs, which were for a time the thinnest vertical clutch chronographs in the world until F. Many other watch companies have since followed suit and have incorporated the vertical clutch system into their chronographs. Seiko certainly didn’t invent the vertical clutch (historians believe that honor belongs to Pierce), but it was certainly the first to bring this technical achievement back to the forefront of chronograph technology. In 1969, Seiko’s 6139 chronograph caliber was nothing short of revolutionary, incorporating a column wheel and a vertical clutch system.
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