Girard Perregaux

crown comfort
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Back in time, Did you know?

When I was visiting the manufacture earlier this year, we not only viewed the current collection, but were also able to see some of the vintage collection at the manufacture which is destined to go to the newly planned museum in due course.

1970 is a very good year

At the time, a lot of manufacturers were developing battery-powered watches. The Quartz watch was still not yet ready, but here as well GP would soon play a major role and a forerunner in the development and a breakthrough design with the Quartz frequency and stepping motor.

Bulova had came out with the Accutron with the tuning fork mechanism and Hamilton had a moving coil mechanism.

And there was the transistor-regulated electronic watch with Balance wheel. The main movement for this came from ESA (ETA) but also other manufacturers experimented with it.

What was common to all of them, they did not exist for very long and very soon the Quartz watch had hit the market and prevailed as the battery-powered mechanism.

GP also brought out an electronic watch with balance wheel, hosting the ESA 9154 movement. The watch was marketed as Type 290 and came in an almost square case with round dial as it was fashion at that time. There were Gyromatic models with the same case available as well.

The watch:

The movement: (needless to say that I was not able to open the back, but the below photo is from the net, credit ambwatches)

Best,

CC