Timeline  /  The first serial flyback chronograph
1936

The first serial flyback chronograph

Longines calibre 13ZN made the flyback a series-production chronograph: one press sent the hand back to zero and started it again.

Longines calibre 13ZN chronograph movement
A Longines calibre 13ZN, the movement itself.Photograph: EMore98 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The need
A pilot flying by dead reckoning times each leg of the route from the moment of each turn. Stop, reset and start again takes three presses and costs seconds at the wrong moment.
Made for
Aviators, military and civil.
What was new
The flyback: one press of the reset pusher while the chronograph runs sends the hand to zero and restarts it immediately.
Worth knowing
A 13-ligne column-wheel chronograph made from 1936 to 1951. Collectors still rank it among the finest chronograph movements ever made in series.

Historian’s noteBovet patented a flyback pocket chronograph in 1889, and Longines fitted the function to a few 13.33Z movements from about 1925. The claim that holds is the first flyback chronograph made in series for the wrist.

SourcesLongines

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