For those of you not familiar with the Primero story, Charles Vermot occupies a critical spot in the saga. In 1975, Zenith was owned by american Zenith Electronics who ordered all mechanical movement production stopped and the machine tools to be scrapped. Charles Vermot was the man who saved El Primero from extinction by an act of personal courage and doggedness.
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It should not be forgotten that a significant contributor to the resurrection of the El Primero in 1984 was the mighty Rolex Watch Company, which had never jumped on the quartz bandwagon. At this time the Rolex Daytona Cosmograph, a manual-wind chronograph, was powered by the iconic Valjoux 72. Rolex wanted to go automatic ("perpetual" like its other watches), and so sniffed around Zenith, who'd produced the best automatic movement in the El Primero. They closed the deal, and so Zenith supplied its movements to Rolex for the Daytona from 1985-2000, greatly assisting Zenith in resuming its own production.
