Movado Super Sub Sea Chronograph, early 1960s

Dealer description — Analog/Shift

Movado started in 1881, when watchmaker Achilles Ditesheim opened a workshop for the production of pocket watches in La Chaux-de-Fonds. His brothers Léopold and Isidore joined him in 1886. By 1900, the brothers were producing wristwatches. In 1905, the brothers moved production to a new facility and christened their brand Movado, which means "always in motion" in Esperanto. Even in the early days, watches produced by the brothers garnered many awards, surpassing watches of their rivals at competitions. Movado produced incredible mechanical timepieces through the 20th century, gaining notoriety for their Museum Watch, a Bauhaus-inspired design from 1947 characterized by its singular hour marker at 12 o'clock, reminiscent of the sun at noon. Dating from the early 1960s, the Super Sub Sea Chronograph is a relative rare version of that elusive hybrid, the chronodiver. Earlier versions of this chronograph bore the M95 movement, first developed by Piguet in 1938, which has the distinction of being the first modular chronograph movement. These Super Sub Sea chronographs can be distinguished from later versions by the position of the chronograph registers, being closer together than in later versions. The look of the Super Sub Sea chronodiver changed after Movado and Zenith were united in 1969 under their parent holding company, Mondia-Zenith-Movado. This of course was a banner year for horology, being the debut of the Zenith El Primero movement and the Caliber 11 developed by Breitling, Heuer, and Buren. Due to a change in movement, the registers of these later Super Sub Sea chronodivers are farther apart now, and they lack the distinctive squiggly sub-dial hands that set the earlier chronodivers apart. At first glance, this later-model Super Sub Sea chronodiver takes designs cues from the Zenith A277, with its reverse-panda dial, rotating bezel, and prominent pushers. Indeed, these watches share movements: the Caliber 285. Zenith and Universal Gèneve worked together on a collaborative basis starting in the 1960s, with Zenith often adapting designs of Universal Gèneve ébauches to suit their own purposes. The Caliber 285 is a beautiful movement, with a column wheel and a Breguet hairspring. The Super Sub Sea is certainly a stunner, with a large, strong 41mm case. The case is sharp, robust, the kind of watch you won't definitely forget you're wearing when it's strapped to your wrist. For a watch that's as rare as it is sharp, it will certainly catch eyes.