Calibre 330

Notes

The 330 is Longines designation for the Valjoux 72. At the end of the 1960s as quartz movements began entering the watch market, a series of consolidations happened in the swiss watch industry. Longines starting in 1970, merged into conglomerate ASUAG (a holding company set up by the swiss government during the great depression) with the goal of consolidating and streamlining the production of watches so that the industry could utilize its economies of scale to decrease costs and better compete with the emerging quartz watches. The merger would not become fully complete until 1972. During this time period one of the first in-house Longines movements to be discontinued was the 30CH which the Longines technical department had considered too expensive to produce for some time. It was effectively replaced by the Valjoux 23/72 family of calibres (Valjoux also being a part of ASUAG) though manual wind chronograph calibres were themselves to fall out of favor by the end of the 1970s too.