GIRAD PERREGAUX HF CHRONOMETER – SOLD
Description
High frequency chronometer level elegence from Girard Perregaux
Little known outside of advanced watch collectors, is Girard Perregaux’s chronometer level High Frequency automatic. Initially launched in 1966 with the calibre 32a movement, Girard Perregaux’s new ground-braking 36,000 high-beat chronometer wrist watch, was an uber-expensive purchase of the time. To give an indication of its price, you could have purchased nearly two Rolex Daytona wrist watches for the price of Girard Perregaux’s Chronometer HF.
Item description: 1969 stainless steel cased Girard Perregaux Chronometer HF. The stunningly beautiful shaped case has a highly polished top, with light-bark finished side panels . Complementing the case, is a mat-silvered dial with applied battons. The dial bearing the name Girard Perregaux – Chronometere HF – Gyromatic. Day calender at the 6.0 clock position. The watch with the 2nd generation 36,0000BPH chronometer movement, calibre 42.4. The inside of the case-back fully stamped with the Girard Perregaux name and logo,the watch with stainless steel Girard Perregaux strap.
Size: 45mm x37mm
Condition report: The watch in NOS near mint condition . Dial original and excellent condition. Movement clean and functioning (no warranty implied). The watch seemingly unused for decades, and in need of a service. The timepiece may have been opened, so it should not be used near moisture or water without being checked by a qualified watchmaker.
Background to Girard perregaux: In 1791, watchmaker and goldsmith Jean-François Bautte signed his first watches. He created a manufacturing company in Geneva, grouping, for the first time ever, all the watch making facets of that time. This meant starting from the engineering of the watch, all the way to the final hand assembly and hand polishing of each watch. In 1852, the watchmaker Constant Girard founded the Girard & Cie Firm in La Chaux-de-Fonds. He married Marie Perregaux and the Girard-Perregaux Manufacture was born in 1856. In 1906, Constant Girard-Gallet, who had taken control of the company from his father, took over the Bautte House; merging it with Girard-Perregaux & Cie. In 1880, Constant Girard produced the first ever major commercial production of a wristwatch, made for German naval officers and ordered by German Kaiser Wilhelm I for his German naval officers. Two-thousand such watches were ordered and produced. A large quantity for the time.
In 1965 Girard-Perregaux designed the first high frequency mechanic movement with the balance beating at 36,000 vibrations/hour (Gyromatic HF), and just two years later, in 1967, the company received the Centenary Award from the Astronomical Observatory de Neuchatel in recognition of the accomplishments of the Manufacture generally, and specifically for the Observatory Chronometer wristwatch that used the Gyromatic HF movement. This first generation 36,000 high-beat movement was made in a run of 662 pieces. By 1969, a modified 2nd generation high-beat movement was being used.
Girard-Perregaux were always operating at the pinnacle of technology, so it was no surprise, when in 1970, the Company presented the world’s first quartz wristwatch. This kept Girrard Perregaux afloat during the quartz revolution of the 1970s, and into the mechanical rennaissance of the 1980s. Today, the company is still respected for its high quality mechanical watches.
Provenance: n/a
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