A Brief History of the Automatic Chronograph
The history of the automatic wristwatch is extremely interesting, but even a short summary would exceed the scope of this article. 1

In comparison, the history of the chronograph is still clear enough to allow a brief overview. Before we start, a word about terminology: Strictly speaking, all "chronographs" today are "chronoscopes" - they show the elapsed time, but they do not record it (Greek chronos = "time" and graphô = "I write"). The word "chronograph," however, has become the generally used term and it would be a silly know-all attitude to use anything else.

Per definition, a chronograph is a chronometric (time-measuring) device which contains a mechanism that allows to stop at least one hand to facilitate reading of the elapsed time.

Around 1720, the English watchmaker Graham built the first clock which allowed to measure the duration of an event - theoretically, with 1/16 second accuracy! Graham is therefore known as the "Father of the Chronograph" today.

In Paris, Rieussec built a clock in 1822 that was a real "chronograph" which wrote the elapsed time on the dial as a series of ink dots.

The "chronographe (à) rattrapante," the split-second chronograph, was invented by the Austrian Winnerl (the literature is rather unanimous about that; I only mention this because someone from Perrelet once told me that it was invented by Perrelet ...). The exact date is not known; both 1811 and 1831 are found in the literature.

In 1862, Adolphe Nicole developed the first chronograph whose hand could be set back to zero, and in 1883, the first chronograph with the nowadays typical twin pusher design appeared.

Though automatic wristwatches had seen an enormous development since the 1930s and 1940s, the automatic chronograph was obviously not on top of watch companies' priority list. Lemania had developed an automatic chronograph in 1947, but serial production was never started. It is possible that the technical problems could not yet be overcome in mass production, it is likewise possible that they did not see a market for such a watch as the interest in chronographs had generally be declining since the end of WW II.

For more than twenty years, nothing happened.

In the late 1960s, Swiss and Japanese watch companies realised that the automatic chronograph was the last challenge that was waiting for a solution.
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1969 became an important year: Not only did "Men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon," but suddenly, the watch world was buzzing with automatic chronographs. Things happened so fast that we have to look at the exact dates:

January 10, 1969
The manufactory Zenith (then Zenith/Movado), which had a lot of experience with manual-wind chronographs from a cooperation with Martel Watch (a former supplier of Universal Genève, but owned by Zenith since 1960) presented a caliber which became enormously successful; even today, it is still the standard to which all others are compared: Zenith's "El Primero."
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When Zenith addressed the problem of the automatic chronograph, their idea was rather different from the Büren group's way to do it (cf. below). Zenith wanted and developed a "classical" chronograph caliber with a column wheel and a central full-size rotor running on ball-bearings. The idea behind this was to keep the movement's dimensions within certain limits, and the "El Primero's" diameter of 13 lines (29.33 mm) and height of 6.5 mm do indeed compare favourably with the "Chronomatic's" measures. Furthermore, they wanted to set a new standard in accuracy and measurement precision and they also succeeded in this aspect: The "El Primero's" 36,000 a/h have not been reached, leave alone beaten by any other caliber until today.
(I do not count Büren's Caliber 82 from 1970 here as only 200 or 300 watches were built; it could be had with 28,800 or 36,000 a/h, and even 43,200 a/h had been tried experimentally.)

The lubrication of this ultra-high-beat caliber was (and is) a special problem. (El Primero owners: Have your watch serviced by an authorized Zenith service center only; conventional procedures might damage the movement!) With "normal" oil, the bearings would dry due to the high centrifugal forces; Zenith developed a lubrication system based on molybdenum sulphide.

Whereas both versions of this caliber (date only and date/day/month/moon phase) are called "El Primero" today ("El Primero 400" and "El Primero 410"), they had different names in the earlier years: "El Primero" (280 parts) was the date-only version, the full calendar-movement with moon phase (354 parts) was called "Espada."
The name "El Primero" has become so common that hardly anybody remembers that these calibers also have a more technical name: The "El Primero" (or "El Primero 400") is Zenith's caliber 3019 PHC, the "Espada" (or "El Primero 410") is the 3019 PHF.
A picture of the "El Primero 400" is found on Zenith's website. Pictures of an "El Primero 410" including magnified views of the column wheel with the chronograph on and off are found on a separate page on my site.

Besides Zenith, Daniel Roth, Officine Panerai, and Dunhill use the E.P. 400.

Due to the re-organizations that took place in the Swiss watch industry in the last decade of the 20th century, the former competitors Heuer (now TAG-Heuer) and Zenith are both owned by LVMH today. As a result of this, TAG Heuer now also offers a 36,000 a/h chronograph caliber: The movement of the Classics Monza "Calibre 36" was jointly developed by TAG Heuer and Zenith.

March 3, 1969
The second automatic chronograph was simultaneously presented in Geneva, New York, Tokyo, Hong-Kong and Beirut. It was developed by an association that had constituted itself in 1965 and that comprised the companies Büren-Hamilton, Breitling, Dubois-Dépraz and Heuer-Leonidas. To avoid the problems arising from a rotor mounted above the chronograph mechanism, a modular construction had been chosen.

One of my books tells me that the base caliber was the Büren Watch Company's "Super Slender," a.k.a. Caliber 1001, a microrotor movement that had been presented in 1958. According to another source, the 1965 Büren "Intramatic" caliber 1280 was used. A third book names Büren's "Intramatic" caliber 1322 as the base caliber. Considering that the "Super Slender" and the "Intramatic 1280" had 18,000 alternations per hour (a/h) and the "Intramatic 1322" 19,800, I am more inclined to believe the 1322 version.
I asked Breitling, Dubois-Dépraz and TAG Heuer about this; the answers were "Intramatic" (Dubois-Dépraz), "a specially developed Büren Intramatic caliber" (Breitling), and "a Büren caliber" (TAG Heuer) - which doesn't exactly help to clarify this issue. Anyway, the Dubois-Dépraz 8510 chronograph mechanism was added to the base caliber. TAG Heuer kindly sent me some pictures from a repair manual; one of these is found below.

This new caliber, "Caliber 11," was named "Chronomatic" (from CHRONOgraph and autoMATIC). The chronograph pushers were at the classic "2" and "4" positions, the crown, however, had been mounted at the 9 o'clock instead of the usual 3 o'clock position to visibly underline the fact that the times of manual winding were over.
The only disadvantage of this caliber was the lack of a separate seconds hand; there was simply no room for it.

The chronograph used a lever mechanism, not a column wheel (sometimes also called "castle wheel"). The chronograph module could be assembled and tested independently. Caliber 11 was 13 3/4 lines (31.02 mm) in diameter with a height of 7.7 mm. With 19,800 a/h, its accuracy came close to chronometer standards. It was built from 1969 to 1972; its successor, Caliber 12, was basically identical except for its 21,600 a/h.

 
Dubois-Dépraz chronograph module 8510 above the base caliber
Picture Copyright © TAG Heuer, used with permission
 

The companies that formed the association each used the name "Caliber 11" (and later "Caliber 12") in combination with their own name; this means that names like "Breitling caliber 11," "Heuer caliber 11," or "Hamilton caliber 11" all describe exactly the same movement. 2
 

The "Chronomatic Caliber 11" and the "El Primero" were both presented to the general public at the 1969 Basel Show, "El Primero," however, was really "the first."

May 1969
The Japanese Seiko Corporation began to sell automatic chronographs with a caliber that had only been patented in early 1969. Caliber 6139 (21 jewels, 12 lines, i.e., 27.1 mm in diameter) had day and date indications and a 30-minute-recorder.
Only one year later, in 1970, it was followed by caliber 6138 with an additional 12-hour-recorder.


 
Back to history: What happened after the eventful year of 1969?

In 1972, Lemania and Omega presented their jointly developed caliber 1040. Like the "Chronomatic," it had a diameter of 13 3/4 lines, the height was 8 mm, and, like the "El Primero," it had a central rotor.

Exactly the same dimensions are found in another "classic" automatic chronograph: In 1973, the Valjoux 7750 appeared. Together with its closest relative, the Valjoux 7751 (the differences between these two are similar to "El Primero" 400 vs. 410), it is the most common automatic chronograph caliber and is found in many watches of this type today - a true long runner.

If, as a watch collector, you are more interested in certain calibers than in special brands or models, you have a wide choice of watches with a Valjoux 7750 caliber. There are some small and not very famous brands that offer Valjoux 7750 watches for about a quarter of the price that you pay for, e.g., a Breitling "Chronomat." Simply consider that, in 1998, a German wholesaler offered the blank movements for DM (Deutschmark) 298.- (Valjoux 7750) / 389.- (Valjoux 7751) and ask yourself how much you want to spend ...

1974 saw another interesting addition to the world of automatic chronographs:
Kelek presented their caliber D.B.K. 1369. With a diameter of only 11 lines (24.81 mm) and a height of 7.6 mm, this 21-jewel movement held the record as the smallest automatic chronograph for a very long time.
The rather uncommon positions of the date indication and the 30-minute- and 6-hour-recorders were a "trademark" of this caliber; another watch from this era which was made by Minerva also used the Dubois-Dépraz TDBK 1369 and had the same layout of the dial as the Kelek watch. (Remember that there was - and is - a very close cooperation between Kelek and Dubois-Dépraz; D-D produces some movements exclusively for Kelek, others are also available to other companies.)

We are approaching the end of this short overview; the last caliber that I want to mention shows that the development of the automatic chronograph is a continuing process: In 1997, Lemania presented their chronograph caliber 1050 which is available in both manual wind and automatic versions. To my knowledge, this is the smallest currently made automatic chronograph with a diameter of 10.5 lines (23.69 mm) and a height of 6.0 mm. These values even beat Frédéric Piguet's caliber 11.85 (diameter 11.5 lines / 25.94 mm , height 5.5 mm). The 38-jewel 1050 is also available in a "rattrapante" (split-second) version.