Valjoux 7750 History
Maurice de Mauriac Zurich Chronograph, featuring the Valjoux 7750
The story of the Valjoux 7750 is the story of an underdog. As with many of our stories, this one begins in 1969. 1969 was such a significant year in horological history, Zenith launched the El Primero, Heuer joined forces with Breitling to make the Caliber 11, and Seiko relesaed the Astron. To put it simply, Valjoux had its back against the wall, and it had to make a move.
Valjoux was founded by Charles and John Reymond in 1901 and specialized in chronograph movements, notably producing the Caliber 22, a hand-wound chronograph movement, since 1914. As a leader in the early chronograph market, Valjoux was slow to join the automatic chronograph game, and as such appointed Edmond Capt to lead development of their first automatic chronograph movement in the early 1970s. Using the Valjoux 7730 as his base, Capt developed the Valjoux 7750. The first chronograph to use levers as opposed to column wheels, levers which were easier to mass produce and more reliable than the column wheels.
The Valjoux 7750 was officially launched in 1973, but, being an underdog, was late to the market and quickly shut down by Valjoux’s managers – much like the El Primero. And much like the El Primero, Capt stored the documents related to the Valjoux 7750’s construction, instead of destroying them as ordered by his superiors. This was a critical move, because when mechanical watches came back into favour in the early 1980s, Swiss automatic chronograph movements were in high demand. Being one of the few remaining Swiss automatic chronograph movements after the devastation of the Quartz Attack, the Valjoux 7750 was quickly adopted by the likes of Breitling, IWC, Fortis, Hamilton, Sinn, Franck Muller, and others. Moreover, Valjoux was consolidated into ETA and the movement was thereafter known as the ETA Valjoux 7750.
The ETA Valjoux 7750 is still used widely today, and it will surely continue to be an important chronograph movement for years to come. Historically, it is certainly the most prominent chronograph movement.