Zenith
Zenith
Image: Supplied

This month, the 2017 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève unveiled its prize list in front of an audience composed of leading personalities and representatives of the Swiss watch industry. One of the most-anticipated on the prize list, the Innovation Watch Prize, was awarded to Zenith for its Defy Lab. Considered a fitting prize by most, as the world’s most accurate watch, Zenith will certainly be writing its future.

‘We are truly proud to receive this prize, which we see as the most important of them all. Here at Zenith, we are determined to instil a genuine start-up spirit and to reconnect the brand with innovation, the driving force for growth since our founding 152 years ago.’ Zenith’s CEO, Julien Tornare beamed with pride. ‘It is a real reward and a token of recognition for the work accomplished by our entire staff!’

‘I congratulate the Zenith teams as well as the R&D Institute of the LVMH Watches Division. Through this synergy of competencies devoted to serving Zenith, they have demonstrated and confirmed that Zenith now represents the future of the traditional watchmaking art,’ said Jean-Claude Biver, President of LVMH Watch Division.

THE DEFY LAB IN A NUTSHELL

The timepiece by Zenith boldly defies the sprung balance regulating-organ principle that has been around since 1675, and instead called on technologies based on the latest research in horology and in the science of materials.

Aptly named the Defy Lab, it represents a major watchmaking breakthrough with its new monolithic oscillatore which replaces up to 30 components of the conventional regulating organ.

This does away with all the stages that are normally required for the latter, such as assembly, adjustment, setting, testing and lubrication. Beating at the incredible frequency of 15Hz and boasting a generous 60 hours of autonomy, this revolutionary movement achieves an average daily precision of 0.3 seconds, a degree of performance that it maintains for 95% of its power reserve.

Insensitive to gravity and dispensing with any need for lubricants, the Defy Lab is triple certified: for its precision, for its exceptional insensitivity to temperature changes (far exceeding the ISO-3159 standard), as well as for its outstanding resistance to magnetic fields up to 1,100 Gauss, which is 18 times better than the ISO-764 standard.

And to attire this distillation of innovation and technology, Zenith has chosen the world’s lightest aluminium composite, Aeronith.

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