ESA/ETA caliber 940.111 Sample, 1977
Category: aesthetic prototype
Description: Symmetric, stainless steel cased prototype with stainless steel snap back, completely unmarked. Square, metallic blue dial with rounded edges and vertical, alternating hering-bone decoration, raised hour indexes. ‘ESA’ logo and ‘ESAQUARTZ’ below ’12’. Date window at ‘3’. ‘940’ printed in white above ‘6’. Silver hour and minute hands with white insert as hour markers, white seconds hand. Steel crown with raised. Acrylic crystal.
Dimensions: 34.3mm (without crown), lug – lug: 39.6mm, Overall thickness: 8.6mm, lug width: 18mm
Movement: ESA/ETA 940.111 prototype
Additional info: This is one of the numerous aesthetic prototypes or samples of the ESA/ETA 940.111 caliber destined to be presented to external customers. It includes a ‘Statek’ quartz module (tuning fork shaped quartz) produced in-house in the now well running automated production line at EEM in Marin and a CMOS integrated circuit also built in-house in Marin with licence of ‘Hughes Microsystems’ (1).
The only real difference to the finally marketed version of the caliber is, that the ETA and ESA logos are not stamped on the same recesses as in the production versions.
It is estimated that several hundred of such samples were produced, cased differently and featuring different dials and/or hands, mostly adapted to the style of prospective customers to seduce them to adopt their caliber.
Ref.:
- Personal communication with a former Executive Vice-President of Ebauches SA, in charge of Research & Engineering.
