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The Bulova Accutron
warewolfsmith writes "The Bulova Accutron. Introduced in 1961, it was the first successful transistorized watch, far more accurate than any other watch then on the market and a major advance in timekeeping technology. Prior to reading this article I had never heard of it. Interesting history." There are a number of websites devoted to it.
This watch also holds claim as the only watch ever to be used on the moon. Because of thier super-high precission, these watches became the official watch of NASA (which you should know, of course, because it was in the article). It is just too bad that it is so hard to find an original tuning fork model for a reasonable price (and to find parts to fix it when it breaks!). Oh well....
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
The Bulova Accutron. Introduced in 1961, it was the first successful transistorized watch, far more accurate than any other watch then on the market and a major advance in timekeeping technology. Prior to reading this article I had never heard of it. Interesting history.
Woah! Oldtimers (pun intended) invented transistorized watches. They also invented things like ICs, CPUs, computers, and television. I don't know if I'm more frightened by the current accepted ignorance of recent history or the M$ Visual Studio .NET (R)(TM) ad that assaulted me when I clicked in.
Right... I certainly remember the Accutron, and lusted after it. IIRC the original price was something like $300, which would be the equivalent of $3000 or so today, way way beyond my means (or even my parents' graduation-present means).
Before the Accutron, watches, even quite expensive ones, could gain or lose a minute A DAY.
After the Accutron, there was the Pulsar, the first quartz watch, which I also lusted after and also couldn't afford. I believe this was the first quartz watch, certainly the first well-known one. It had a red LED display, and the drain on the batteries was so high that it just displayed a black face until you pushed a button on the side, then the LED's lit up. John D. MacDonald wrote about one in one of the Travis McGee novels, favorably; he said that he liked the idea of a watch that only showed you the time when you WANTED it to, like the old pocket watches with flip-open cases.
Sometimes technological dreams to come true. In the case of wristwatches, TWO of mine have. In the fifties, quartz-crystal timepieces were huge things--I imagine they were rackmounted but I don't know whether I've ever seen one--that were kept only in places like the Naval Observatory and the Bureau of Standards. Being able to pick up a CHEAP quartz WRISTWATCH at the drugstore is a dream come true.
The second... well, I don't know if anyone remembers a movie from the sixties, "David and Lisa," starring Keir Dullea and Janet Margolin. Keir Dullea is better known for playing the role of astronaut David Bowman in "2001: A Space Odyssey." It was a heart-touching romance (really!) between a neurotic young man and a psychotic young woman. The young man is obsessed with time and has dreams of being trapped with his head in a huge clock whose rotating hands will eventually decapitate him slowly.
He tells the psychiatrist that he has a dream of inventing a watch that would synchronize via radio waves from a central location so that everybody could always know the exact time.
I thought this was a pretty neat idea, so I was a little alarmed when the psychiatrist identified it as a neurotic symptom.
Anyway, neurotic or not, I have a quartz-crystal wristwatch on my left hand, and upstairs I have a $25 Oregon Scientific clock that synchronizes via radio (WWVB, I think) to an atomic clock in... well, in Colorado anyway. (It's very puzzling... some of the atomic clock companies say the atomic clock is in Fort Collins, some say Boulder. I suspect the truth is that they synchronize to WWVB in Fort Collins which, in turn, is controlled by an atomic clock in Boulder.)
I've had the radio-controlled clock a year. The only time I actually need to set my watch is when the time changes. I just checked, and my watch and my "atomic" clock are reading within two seconds after each other.
Dan is happy.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I reaquainted myself with the Accutron recently. The battery was shot and had coroded a bit, but it cleaned up nicely and runs like new with the new battery. I think I'll wear it again.
When he first heard of them, he ordered one in the mail. Before it was shipped, he found one in a store. My gandpa loved these watches. He said that they were the first rail-road approved wrist watch. Before the accutron, rail road conductors needed pocket watches to keep time well enough to run a rail way. He made a watch band that would let him wear both at once; so no matter what side of his arm he looked at he could see the time. He would set one to local time and the other to Pacific time when traveled to a different time zone. He was a real watch and radio nerd. He listened to WWV "at 10, 15, and 20 Mgz" (the exact time for navagation at sea) all the time so he would know how fast or slow all his watches and clocks were. He loved fixing and adjusting clocks. The accutron work by counting the number of times the tunning fork vibrates. He loved to put his ear to the watch and hear the little tunning fork keep time. He told me quartz clocks work the same way; only the frequency of quartz is way higher than the frequency of the tunning fork. Both are faster than the frequency of a pendulum.
To think that a 1960's tuning-fork watch can, given the right conditions, be more accurate than the clocks that service 100,000+ people!
Alas, most clock services seem to be wrong. My VCR continually records programs at the wrong time. And it's a VCR with a "self setting" clock. It's about 2 minutes wrong.... thanks to a lame broadcaster who doesn't know how to synch a clock.
This site even tries to make a summary of inaccurate (public) clocks in some guy's world... crazy!
(Yeah, I know that the Bulova wasn't that super accurate, but it's the principle of the thing! We should have better time 40 years later!)
A truly great watch. My dad was a trainman for 33 years and he bought an Acutron in the mid 60's. At the time, it was the only wristwatch that was approved for railroad use. It was one of his most prized possessions. I now have it and it still runs perfectly.
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.