Bulova Accutron 'Floppy Football'

In 1960, Bulova had a vision of the future — and that future hummed with potential!

About a decade before the Quartz Crisis, Bulova introduced a watch that did away with the traditional balance wheel, instead using a 360-hertz tuning fork attached to a battery-powered transistor oscillator circuit as its heart.  Designed by Max Hetzel, the Accutron made waves, becoming the first wristwatch precise enough to be qualified for U.S. Railroad certification — guaranteed to be accurate to about one minute per month, or roughly 2 seconds per day.  

Originally designed to be a salesman's tool highlighting the inner mechanism of the Accutron movement, the Spaceview wasn't intended for retail purchase. But the delight of seeing these inner workings displayed caused demand from retailers and consumers to spike; indeed, seemingly everyone wanted this openworked watch to wear and take home. Bulova responded, producing retail versions with the same unique characteristics of their display models.  

The Accutron Spaceview was unlike anything that came before, and really, anything since. In production for about 17 years, the tuning fork technology was eventually beaten out by quartz crystal movements, making these watches relatively short-lived. But they contain important and revolutionary technology that has had a tremendous impact on today's world.  

This particular example, while not a Spaceview, is predicated on the same technology. It dates back to 1967 and features an asymmetrical case design known to enthusiasts as the 'Floppy Football'. The case is constructed out of steel and features the unique asymmetrical bezel and silver dial, 

No matter your taste, there's no denying that the Accutron tuning fork is an important part of horological history, and an incredible mid-century design object.

As for that humming? Hold this baby up to your ear and there’s no doubt you’ll be soothed by the tuning fork’s soundscape.

It’s music to our ears!

Joseph Bulova, a Czech immigrant to the United States, founded his eponymous company in Queens in 1875, opening a factory in Biel, Switzerland in 1912 to mass-produce timepieces under the American production model. An early designer of men's wristwatches following their widespread adoption in the wake of the First World War, the firm developed simple dress watches, dive watches, and chronographs through the first half of the 20th century.

As the decades wore on, however, the limitations of the traditional oscillating balance wheel — both with respect to accuracy and robustness — were becoming apparent. Electric watches from the likes of Hamilton and Lip experimented with a moving coil motor in place of a mainspring, but their reliance on conventional balance wheels meant they were little more accurate than their entirely mechanical counterparts. A Swiss engineer at Bulova named Max Hetzel would soon change all that.

A born tinkerer and a brilliant mind, Hetzel adopted an old clock design from the 19th century — incidentally invented by the grandson of Abraham-Louis Breguet — that used a tuning fork as its oscillator. Powered by a dry-cell battery and driven by an electromagnetic coil, its frequency of 360 Hz ensured a highly accurate system that powered a sweep hand around the dial. Significantly more accurate than a mechanical design, it was patented in 1953, and after some years of work, the Bulova Accutron debuted to the public in 1960.

The watch was a revelation — literally. A 1961 model with a transparent dial meant to show authorized dealers its inner workings became so popular that Bulova put it into regular production, calling it the Spaceview. Meanwhile, the audible 360-Hz hum produced by the movement was a novel selling point, featuring in-period advertisements in which a man was seen holding the watch up to his ear.

When the U.S. government sought to replace the U-2 spy plane with an aircraft that could outmaneuver anti-aircraft systems, Lockheed Martin's secretive Skunkworks division offered the perfect solution in the form of the sleek A-12, which could reach speeds of Mach III (~2,310 mph). Bulova Accutron wristwatches accompanied the pilots of this advanced piece of engineering, as they did on the wrists of public-facing X-15 flights, which reached speeds of 4,500 mph. The Accutron was even worn by astronauts during the Mercury Seven program during training; in 1963 during Project Mercury; and in Project Gemini missions up until 1983, long after the tuning fork technology had been replaced by more contemporary quartz-powered tech.

In 2020, Accutron was spun off by parent company Bulova — owned by the Citizen Group of Japan — into its own brand, where it continues to produce modern versions of one of the world's downright coolest watches.

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