Venus Cal. 150 is part of the Venus 150 family of movements. It is a hand-winding column wheel chronograph movement. It is the base movement in the family. Cal. 151 is similar but without the beveled edge of Cal. 150. The dial features a 3-9 subdial arrangement.
Cal. 150 was introduced around 1938, updated in 1949, and retired before 1960. The earliest examples had a 5-column wheel and monopusher design. The redesign, which is more commonly seen, has a 7-column wheel and two pushers. Both use a traditional horizontal clutch to engage the chronograph function.
The movement is frequently seen in watches from Breitling, Gallet, Wittnauer, Fortis, Juvenia, and many other brands.
| No Hour Counter | Hour Counter | |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | Venus 150 Venus 151 | Venus 152 |
| Date | Venus 186 | |
| Date, Moon Phase | Venus 187 | |
| Day, Date, Month | Venus 191 |
Vénus is said to have sold the tooling for Cal. 150 and 152 to the First Moscow Watch Factory in the late 1950s. This was shortly before Vénus moved from their original factory to the former Pierce factory, also in Moutier. The company was focused on producing the cam-switching Cal. 210 Family and saw no need to continue production of the pre-war column wheel design. First Moscow Watch Factory produced the movement under the Strela brand, calling it Cal. 3017. It remained in production for decades there. It is said that as many as 100,000 examples were produced before 1980. The same factory later purchased the tooling for the Vénus-based Valjoux 7733 when the Moutier factory was halting production of movements entirely.
More detail on the history of Vénus is available in the Grail Watch article, “The Rise of Vénus, Legendary Chronograph Maker“