Bulova

History

In 1875 Joseph Bulova opened a jewellery and repair shop on Maiden Lane, New York, which years later began producing table and pocket watches. By around 1912 he had set up a plant dedicated solely to watches in Biel, Switzerland, applying standardised production with interchangeable parts. The company was formally reincorporated as the Bulova Watch Company in 1923 and launched large advertising campaigns, including in 1926 one of the first national radio spots, with the line "At the tone, it's eight o'clock, Bulova Watch Time". On 1 July 1941 it aired what is held to be the first television commercial in history, before a baseball game on the WNBT network. In 1960 it presented the Accutron, the first electronic wristwatch driven by a tuning fork oscillating at 360 Hz, then the most accurate in the world, and its technology went on more than 40 NASA missions. In 1979 it became part of Loews Corporation, and in late 2007 / early 2008 it was bought by the Citizen Watch Company for some 250 million dollars.

Iconic models

• Accutron (1960)

  The first tuning-fork electronic watch; its hum in place of a tick marked a technological turn in watchmaking.

• Accutron Astronaut

  The version with a 24-hour GMT bezel worn by X-15 pilots and taken into space in the sixties.

• Lunar Pilot Chronograph

  A reissue of the Bulova chronograph that astronaut Dave Scott wore on the Moon during Apollo 15 in 1971.

• Computron

  A seventies LED digital with a wedge case and side-reading display, an icon of the era's retro-futurist design.

• Oceanographer 'Devil Diver'

  A sixties diver with its 666-feet rating printed on the dial, reissued today as a cult piece.

• Precisionist

  High-frequency quartz (262 kHz) with a continuously sweeping seconds hand and accuracy beyond ordinary quartz.