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Winner was Crestfallen; Hans was Shocked
In Response To: Great job ()

The owner of the watch (an Autavia) had won it at a drawing, at the end of the press conference in New York City. So this was absolutely "first day issue". Sometime during the afternoon, the watch failed, so he took it over to the service department, which was also in Manhattan.

Hans first heard of Heuer's automatic chronographs earlier in the day, when the employees heard about the press conference. He was amazed that the development of these three new chronographs, with an entirely new movement, had remained a secret. Imagine his shock when this first one came in for service, after only a few hours of use. He had no spare parts, no technical manuals, etc., but he said that it was not too difficult to figure out how the watch worked. But it took some time for him to receive the part needed to fix this watch.

We hesitated to "go public" with this story, but it captures so much -- about the race to launch the watch, and the years spent getting the things to run right!!

Jeff

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

: Jeff and contributors- great job. Very interesting - even for a
: technical novice like myself. I can just imagine how crestfallen
: the guy who "won" the first Chronomatic was that his
: new super-watch had stopped working after a couple of hours!

: David

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