If you haven’t heard of ZRC, don’t feel like you’re out of the loop. The 120-year-old Swiss watchmaker keeps a low profile despite having an admirable history and making one of the most exquisite dive watches.
ZRC started by making watch accessories before pitching a dive watch design to outfit the French Navy in 1958. The pitch won and the Grands Fonds was created, remaining the military branch’s official timepiece until 1995.
The Grand Fonds shared many design elements with contemporary divers from the early 1960s, such as wide hour and minute hands, a narrow bezel and a 39-millimeter case. Where the design deviated was a crown placed at six o’clock.
Placing a crown at the bottom of a watch case is intuitive because it prevents the crown from digging into the wearer’s hand when bending their wrist. It also allows the crown to be unscrewed and turned while on the wrist, which is not easy or recommended for conventional crowns.
A six o’clock crown so useful that it would be adopted by more dive watch manufacturers if it weren’t for one snap. Placing the crown between the lugs blocks conventional bracelets.
ZRC specialized in making watch bracelets and cases long before producing a watch, so it was well prepared to design a workaround for this impasse. The Grands Fonds has a bracelet extension connecting the lugs to the bracelet and clearing space for the crown.
