Lot 385

Longines

An extremely rare vintage single-button chronograph with 30 min. counter and legendary Longines calibre 13ZN

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Longines have been regarded as one of the most renowned manufacturers of top quality precision chronographs since the 19th century. In addition, Longines has acted as the official supplier for the International Aeronautics Federation since 1919, developing highly accurate navigation instruments for the pioneers of aviation such as Charles Lindbergh’s hour angle watch. Other technical developments followed, motivated by the participation in a number of important sports events where Longines supplied the stopwatches - from then on the company’s main focus was on the production of chronographs.
In 1936 Longines developed the legendary wristwatch chronograph calibre 13ZN and applied for a patent on it. The first series was produced from 1936 until 1939 and had one chronograph pusher, which makes the watches from this series extremely rare. Calibre 13ZN was specially developed for pilots, who were dependent on easy handling of the start/stop and zero-setting functions - this calibre managed to do it all with the single push of a button.