1968 Breitling Chronomat 0818 "Albino Dial"

The Breitling Chronomat, with its now famous slide-rule scale, was released in 1941 and has been one of the longest running lines for the Swiss company ever since. The advent of the Chrono-Matic movement within the Chronomat happened during an interesting time in horological history, with companies around the world competing with one another to release the very first automatic chronograph movement.

This Breitling represents the perfect marriage between the iconic Chronomat and Navitimer design of the 1960s with the bolder architectural case design that became popular in the 1970s.   The layered scales on the outer dial are a cool design element, but act as true instruments for calculation once you master their usage. This example features a bi-directional rotating bezel with a scale that moves with it.  By using the rotating scale, the wearer can measure speed, distance travelled, and even solve mathematical problems.

Breitling assembled two versions of the reference 0818.  One was powered by the Venus 178 manual wind chronograph movement (with 3 subdials), the other was powered by the famous automatic caliber 11 or 12 on (with 2 subdials and a date window).   Dial-wise, the version with the reverse panda (predominantly black) was the most common.  The rarer are the panda versions.

By far the rarest and most sought after, is the all-white dial, which we at Vintage Eye watches nickname as the “Albino” dial.   This results in a truly eye-catching dial, the expanse of white only broken by the stylized fluorescent orange hands.   These very rarely appear in the open market, and lately on quite faded, well-worn examples.

Condition:

This example features a truly beautiful, flawless dial with even color throughout with minimal fading.  The black bezel has some light surface scratches from normal use.  The engraving on the case back still strong and serial & model numbers are clearly visible.  The watch was recently serviced and the movement running very strongly for its age displaying an amplitude of 3060, and keeping time accurately for a 50 year-old movement, gaining approximately 8 seconds per day.

Specifications:

§  Caliber: Signed manual winding Venus 178  

§  Case: EPSA "Big Case", waterproof, ca. 47mm diameter

§  Bezel: aluminium rotating bezel

§  Hands: wide lumed baton hands, orange chrono sweep.

§  Crystal: Plexiglass

§  Bracelet/Strap: High quality leather strap with Breitling buckle

§  Lug Width: 22mm

§  Box/Papers: Digital Breitling Extract from the Archives