Zenith

Georges Favre-Jacot founded the company in Le Locle in 1865, at the age of 22, and gathered the watchmaking trades under one roof when Swiss production was still dispersed among home workshops. The name Zenith, first given to a calibre, became the company's name in the early twentieth century. The manufacture has a long record in observatory chronometry competitions, including the calibre 135 of the 1950s.

Its defining movement is the El Primero, released in January 1969 as one of the first automatic chronographs and the first to run at 36,000 vibrations per hour. When American owners Zenith Radio Corporation ordered the mechanical tooling scrapped in the 1970s, the watchmaker Charles Vermot hid it in the factory attic, allowing its return in the 1980s; Rolex used it in the Daytona from 1988 to 2000. Zenith has been part of LVMH since 1999. Its main collections are Chronomaster, Defy, Pilot and Elite, and the manufacture remains in Le Locle.