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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.
Okay, let's get them out of the way so other people can start some real discussions. Here are all the clichéd posts in one easy-to-read post!
(+1 Funny) -- "The Bulova Accutron replaces the old Bulova Helluvaweight, a valve operated watch which the wearer pulled along behind them in a shopping cart."
(-1 Flamebait) -- "Who cares about this old crap? It's just old technology that we don't use now anyway."
(-1 Troll) -- "This sucks. Using transistors in a watch? Nowadays we use pure silicon, which they actually had in the 60's but they were unable to see the benefits."
(-1 Overrated) -- "Hi, I'm John Romero/Alan Cox/Linus Torvalds, and I thought I'd drop in and just say 'Hi'"
mogorific carpentry experiments
I thought paying Slashdot users weren't supposed to be subjected to advertising on the site.
Why *wouldn't* you care about the first watch ever? I wear my watch every day and couldn't imagine how folks in the '50s went through life without one!
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26 year-old Web developer from Seattle. And yes, chicks do dig *nix
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.
Do you even know what that word means?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Search for "Omega Speedmaster" to see which watch was approved by NASA for use on the moon.
The Accutron movement was used in some instrumentation, if I recall correctly. The watches weren't approved for use on the moon.
You mean like like this?
> Why *wouldn't* you care about the first watch ever?
The Accutron was scarcely "the first watch ever".
> I wear my watch every day and couldn't imagine how folks in the '50s went through life without one!
I haven't worn a watch for about 10 years, since I find them uncomfortable (for reasons which I won't go into). I manage fine, because I live in a world full of clocks. If things get really bad, I can always look up at the sky and get a reasonably good idea of the time.
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
I wore my Dad's accutron throughout junior high school. People used to ask me about it, and I'd tell them the story of the Astronaut watch.
The coolest thing was, it hummed all the time, and the desks would amplify the sound. During a test, when all the room was quiet and scratching pencils, I would put it on my desk, next to Nadine, my hot 13-year-old desk mate, and she'd smile at the sound it made. That was great.
Then she'd say, "Nerd," and stick out her tongue. That was soooooo great. But I would blush.
Later on, on the foursquare court, people would ask about it, and if I wanted them to think I was cool, I'd let them put their ear to my arm and listen to it.
I tried the same thing last week. The girl at the bar laughed at me, said, "Nerd," and took my buddy home for some reportedly mind-blowing sex.
Sigh.
Um... before you let your ego get out of check, maybe you should consider who is wrong...
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Maybe around since Henry Ford II, not the original. In the 50's the early computers still had tubes and I don't believe even a transistor radio was out until late 50's at the earliest.
There may have been electric watches prior to the accurton (Hamilton, I recall had early ones), but not transistor filled. It wasn't much before that time that they were able to draw wire fine enough, for one thing, even for coils.
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.
Watches used to sail ships have been getting more and more accurate since the 1700's. And watches people carry with them have been getting more and more accurate since the 1700's, to the point that, for the last forty years, a person has been able to carry a watch precise enough for navigation. There is nothing ironic with that, one should not compare apples with oranges.
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.
I was given my grandfather's old Accutron (a trend, it seems), and have really enjoyed it. The only thing that ever gets to me is the constant humming. It's a nice novelty to show others, but can get obnoxious in a quiet enough place. With music playing and fans in my computer spinning, it's virtually unnoticeable, but I honestly can't sleep with it sitting on top of my dresser. It spends the night in my sock drawer.
Also, if you ever get one, pray that it never breaks. I had to have the coils replaced, and there is pretty much one guy on the continent who could fix it. Oh yeah, it scarfs down batteries pretty fast, too. All in all, though, a great watch to have.
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!)
I had occasion to call Bulova about this thing, and their switchboard in Brooklyn, NY answered the phone "It's 3:52 Bulova watch time." Very much an old-line company.
The watch industry was hit hard by quartz watches. Originally, they were developed by the Swiss Institute of Horology to provide a new high-end product. But when they got cheap, it destroyed the mechanical watch business, and with it, most of hte industry in the canton of Neuchatel, Switzerland. The mechanical watch industry used to compete on accuracy, but once cheap watches became good, that was over. High-end watches today are strictly status symbols.
"Rolex is not in the watch business. We are in the luxury business" - Andre Heiniger, Rolex CEO
of course it helps that most cell phones have a clock on them so you can tell time just by looking at your cell phone.
Me, I still wear my watch, and I don't own a cell phone. I'm still waiting on the cell phone/pda combination that doesn't suck. And doesn't cost $500.
When quartz watches first appeared they were more accurate than most mechanical watches. This forced the swiss watchmakers to improve their product and they introduced the 'chronometer' certification.
For a hefty price you can now buy a mechanical watch that is significantly more accurate than most quartz watches.
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and was the distributor of Bulova watches in South Africa. I remember him showing me one of the Accutron Astronaut watches when Bulova started the campaign with posters of the the guys on the Moon along with a Bulova Accutron. Bulova made a special edition for that campaign with a quartz crystal transparent bottom piece. These watches were the holy grail of my fathers company for me and I really revered them. Sadly all these watches were killed by the digital watches with the funny pulsing red LEDs that turned up in the early 70's.
The Seamaster is a diver's watch, but some of them are also chronographs. I bought a Seamaster chronograph in 1970 because it was about $180 and the Speedmaster was about $250. It still works fine but it is unpleasantly heavy on the wrist when you are using a keyboard.
I wanted the speedmaster because it was the "moon watch" but they were hard to find then.
The best thing about the Accutron was the cool sound they made. My grandfather had one, and I keep looking for one of the early ones.
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.)
You are correct, the clock is in Boulder and the signal is transmitted from outside Fort Collins. And now you can ditch that old quartz watch, as you can get WWVB-sync'd wrist watches now. I can't imagine the reception is very good, but I'd like to try one.
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.
I have one, I should have batteries put in, and USE it.
I got it as a Jr High grad present, of so many years ago. A few years later I actually worked for Bulovia for the summer
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
According to their website, the broadcasted time is from atomic clocks at Fort Collins, which are compared to the reference clock in Boulder. So while I guess the master time comes from Boulder, they do have multiple atomic clocks at the radio station.
I'm not sure which makes me feel older, the ignorance of the past displayed by this post, the ignorance of the past diplayed by whoever moderated it as informative, or the fact that I remember when the Accutron first came out.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.