The first prototype became operational in 1954. On June 19, 1953, a patent was registered under number 312290. Incredible! It divided each second into a hundred equal parts. Its mechanical caliber provided uneven precision: two seconds per day or one minute per month. The tuning fork was placed between two transistors and it oscillated at 360 Hz, which was a higher frequency than that of a classical balance. In an endeavor to improve the precision even more, he replaced the balance with a tuning fork, which is a small metallic piece made of two parallel arms soldered in a U-shape and extended by a stem. Max Hetzel thought that adding a transistor to the movement would help improve the watch’s precision. The project consisted of creating an electronic watch that had better precision than electronic or mechanical watches. While this source of energy allows for greater autonomy, it doesn’t provide any improvements in precision compared to classical mechanical watches.īulova then decided to take matters into its own hands and entrusted the management of the “Accutron” project to Max Hetzel, a Swiss engineer recruited in Bienne in 1950. An electrical watch is a mechanical watch with a movement that functions through the energy of a 1.35-V battery. The history of the Accutron began in 1952 when the Elgin Watch Company released the first electrical watch (Elgin Grade 725). Breguet, the grandson of the famous Abraham-Louis Breguet who invented the Tourbillon (filed for patent on October 26, 1856). In 2010, the brand introduced Precisionist, a quartz movement with a precision of +/- 10 seconds per year and which stands out thanks to a seconds hand that works continuously, as mechanical watches do.īulova created the first tuning fork wristwatch in the 1960s, yet the very first mechanical clock with a tuning fork was created in 1856 by Louis F. These include “Bulova”, “Caravelle”, “Wittnauer” and the heir “Accutron”. Today, Bulova owns several brands to satisfy the needs of a wider range of clients. In 2008, Citizen, a Japanese group, took over Bulova after the group Loews Corporation group had managed it since 1979. These ads made the brand very popular among American consumers. It was thus the first brand to have a radio ad in 1923, with the slogan: “It’s 8am, Bulova Time”, and to later have a television ad, in 1941. In 1923, it was renamed Bulova Watch Company, and became a precursor in communications. In 1928, it introduced the first clock radio.

In 1920, it built an observatory on the roof of a skyscraper to make calculations that allowed it to determine universal time precisely. From then on, the brand continued to bring about watchmaking innovations. In 1912, it opened a production unit in Bienne, Switzerland, for mass watch production, an original approach at the time. The brand was soon famous for its high quality products, both in terms of aesthetics and technicality. 'Bulova Accutron, first tuning fork electronic watch' Bulova: innovation it is!īulova was founded in 1875 by Joseph Bulova (1851-1936), a Czech expat who arrived in New York at the age of nine. This model brought fame and success to Bulova and the piece was even worn by American astronauts when they travelled to the Moon. Engineer Max Hetzel developed its transistor movement, which was able to achieve an unprecedented precision of a minute per month. The world’s first electronic watch functions with a tuning fork a small fork-shaped piece that until then had only been used in music. In 1950, long before the arrival of quartz watches, whose precision led to their supplanting mechanical pieces, Bulova, an American watch brand, worked on a technology that increased watches’ autonomy and precision the two weak spots of mechanical watches at the time.ĪCCUTRON stands for “ACCUracy through ElecTRONic”.