Horological Meandering

DonCorson
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Eterna Watches - Pre BaselWorld 2014 report

Pre BaselWorld 2014 report - Eterna Watches

Eterna is one of the grand old names of Swiss watchmaking.  It can call on a history going back to its founding in 1856 by Dr. Joseph Girard and Urs Schild.  Less than 10 years later Dr. Girard sold his shares to Urs Schild to return to his profession as a medical doctor.  Schild Frères became one of the big watch and movement makers and was among those who first adopted mass production techniques around 1870 in Switzerland. 










The name Eterna appeared for the first time on a Schild Fréres pocket watch in 1889.  In the beginning of the last century Schild had two watch lines, Victoria and Eterna.  In 1905 the company took on the name Eterna.  Note that ETA, today the biggest Swiss movement maker and belonging to Swatch Group, was founded on 1926 by Eterna in a restructuration to separate the movement manufacture from the watch brand.  Many of the popular ETA mechanical movements are based on Eterna developments.  This is easy to see through the similarity of, for example, the automatic reversers and the use of a direct central second.  Eterna’s biggest claim to fame is the introduction of the industrial use of the ball bearing for the automatic rotor in 1947 in the Eterna-matic models.  The Eterna-matic was a big success and quickly the 5 spheres in the automatic rotor bearing became the Eterna logo.  You can see those 5 balls in central rotor bearing below.




As a brand Eterna has been through some hard times.  Around 1990 Eterna was purchased by Porsche Design and, of course, the Porche Design watches got first billing.  The Eterna brand was not killed, but languished in the shadows.  In 2011 Eterna was purchased by the Chinese holding China Haidian Chinas largest watch company which owns several big Chinese brands, the Chinese Swatch Group, so to say.  China Haidian also owns Corum and for a short time the Corum CEO was also CEO of Eterna and again Eterna was in the second rank.

Since 2013 Eterna has their own CEO and is in full relaunch mode.  While movement design and production has always had major importance, also while under Porsche Design, a new modular movement has been designed and is now in production.  Production capacity is now being built up to be able to produce this movement in large quantities, also for 3rd parties.  We will see more of this in the second part of this report.

Now that we have heard some history, let’s look at some watches.  When I hear the name Eterna I think of two things, elegant thin watches with a curved face and the KonTiki series of sports watches.

This is how I think of Eterna first. This watch from the Vaughn collection uses the 3030 movement which is a modern rendition of the traditional Eterna 1504 movement from 1974.  The movement uses 3 ball bearings, one for the automatic rotor and 2 in the added big date mechanism.















Movement 3030







The other of Eterna’s iconic watches is the KonTiki, first introduced in 1950 to celebrate Thor Heyerdahl’s voyage on the KonTiki balsa raft.  During this voyage which proved in 1947 that the Polynesian peoples could have come from South America Thor Heyerdahl and his collegues wore Eterna watches. 
This is the 1973 limited edition which uses an ETA 2824-2 movement.



















On of the big movement developments for Porsche Design was this automatic mechanical digital chronograph the 6036.  This movement has 4 barrels to have enough energy to do all the indications jumping.  This movement has 800 pieces, 101 jewels and a watchmaker needs 42 days to do the assembly and testing.











Here we see the 6037 movement, a GMT that has only one set of hands.  With a second crown at  2 the second time zone is selected.  By pressing the button integrated in the crown at 2 the time indication is changed between the home time and the second time zone.







The 3510 movement was made for the Madison watch line with its rectangular housing.  This is a very handsome movement has double barrels for a long 8-day autonomy.  The movement also incorporates a big date and power reserve indication.







Although not presently used in a watch on the market at the moment that movement also exists in a round form.








The Madison using the 3510 8-day movement.







The Adventic series uses the 3843 GMT movement. This movement uses the Eterna Spherodrive, a double ball bearing used for the barrel and barrel arbor which increases the watch autonomy by reducing friction and the watch thickness by eliminating some standard bearings.







The newest Eterna movement development is a modular movement that can be mounted as a simple 3 hand, manual wind watch and by adding complication units all the variations of dates and chronos up to a flyback chronograph can be made.  This makes the 39XX movement family.
These complication units are something like modules, except they are built in to the movement and not added on top.  They can be built and tested separately from the base movement and added in the last minute before final testing.
Here we see a 39XX base movement.  With the addition of some “blind” non-functional bridges this will make a simple 3 hand, manual wind watch.











This new KonTiki model which will be shown next week at BaselWorld 2014 uses the 39XX with automatic winding and a simple quantième.












Here we see the 39XX in a version with flyback column wheel chrono.



In the next part of this report we will visit the Eterna production facilities. 
Click here to read part 2



This message has been edited by DonCorson on 2014-03-23 06:45:11

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