“Are you ready? Because I want you to pay attention. This is the beginning of something.”
So opens Season 7 of AMC's Mad Men, with Sterling Cooper copywriter Freddie Rumsen pitching the new Accutron watch from Bulova. “Accutron,” he intones. “It’s not a timepiece — it’s a conversation piece."
In 1960, this thought-provoking electronic watch offered state of the art technology and design. But in order to fully understand its significance, we need to turn back the proverbial clock for a moment — all the way back to 1875. Nearly 150 years ago, Joseph Bulova established a small jewelry shop in Queens, no doubt unaware of its vast potential. In 1912, the firm opened a movement manufacture in Biel, Switzerland, carting over American mass-production methods. Within a few decades, Bulova had grown into one of the most important watchmaking manufactures in the United States.
By the 1950s, progress was being made within the realm of electronic watches as an alternative to traditional mechanical watchmaking. But it was the Bulova Accutron that brought a degree of hitherto unheard-of accuracy and robustness to the scene in 1960. Its tuning fork oscillator, beating at a consistent 360 Hz, swept a seconds hand smoothly around the dial periphery, while a dry cell battery provided a constant flow of power via an electromagnetic coil. This technology, developed by Swiss engineer Max Hetzel, was inspired by a tuning-fork clock built in the 19th century by Abraham-Louis Breguet, grandson of perhaps the most important watchmaker in history.
The Accutron — especially in its futuristic, transparent Spaceview guise — quickly found its way onto the wrists of test pilots, astronauts, and everyday people searching for a reliable, handsome timepiece. And though its movement technology would later be eclipsed by more inexpensive, quartz-powered systems, its legacy has endured all the way into the 21st century. In 2020, Accutron was spun off from Bulova into its own distinct entity, charged with the caretaking of a legendary development that has come to define horological ingenuity in the 20th century.
Beyond the debut of their brand-new Spaceview 2020 and Accutron DNA models, Accutron also reached into their back catalog of magical mid-century designs, and thus, the Legacy Collection was born. The Accutron Legacy Collection is a modern re-imagining of the brand's most memorable pieces from the 1960s and 1970s. Using mechanical movements as a nod to their roots in traditional watchmaking, these timepieces were directly inspired from their original briefs and have captured the hearts of enthusiasts today. As it stands, the Legacy Collection embodies the culture at a time when the world was shifting.
More than a century prior, the world was experiencing yet another shift with the advent of locomotive transportation. The railroad system completely changed the landscape of travel and cross-border trading. However as transcontinental business exploded between North America and Canada, the lack of standard time across 600 railroads and 60 conflicting RR systems would eventually rear its ugly head in 1891 when an accident in Cleveland, Ohio claimed 11 lives. The unfortunate cause — a pocket watch 4 minutes too slow.
Thanks to the superior accuracy of the tuning fork, Accutron would go on to be one of the first watch manufactures to be approved by the North American Railroad with their railroad-grade watches being issued directly to American railroad staff in 1962.
This Accutron 'Railroad Grade' Legacy Edition is a modern recreation of the 'R.R.- O' released in 1970. This piece features a 34mm stainless steel case with a domed sapphire crystal; a sublte tonneau-shaped, polished bezel; a 'tuning fork' signed off-center crown and an individually numbered caseback with a sapphire display aperture.
Priding itself on its incredible legibility, this piece features a stark white dial with bold printed Arabic hour indices with a '0' residing at 12 o'clock to meet Canadian specifications, a printed 24-hour inner track, a date window at 3 o'clock, a matching stylized handset and a sweeping center seconds hand dressed in safety orange.
Offered with your choice of a premium Accutron leather strap outfitted with a signed stainless steel deployant buckle, this Legacy piece is an important link to North American transit and horological history ...
... And yet another "first" amongst a long list of "firsts" for the esteemed brand.