Accutron Watches

Accutron Watches Early Origins

Bulova, the creator of the Accutron watch was established in 1875 by Joseph Bulova in New York City. Bulova began creating the Accutron watch as early as 1952 by brilliant man by the name of Max Hetzel, an engineer which revolutionized the technology used to keep accurate time. He joined the company in 1950 and came up with the idea to make electronic watches use tuning fork technology instead of the innacurate electroninc balance wheel movement. Max began his research and developed the concept in 1953.

Accutron Watches Technology

The Accutron tuning fork movement is an electronic watch that uses a tuning fork that divides each second into hundreds of equal parts. The premis was to guarantee that Accutron watches would be accurate to within 2 seconds a day or one minute per month. The mechanism would work like this, a small tuning fork device would oscillate at a constant frequency when an electrical current was run through it. The Accutron tuning fork would be placed to a ratcheting mechanism that turned a gear one notch per oscillating cycle powered by a transistor, making it truly the first electronic watch. It eliminated the fragile traditional balance wheel and hairspring methodology.

Accutron Watches Milestones

Accutron watches was mass produced starting in 1960. It was considered to be the most accurate timing mechanism of its day and the first personal timekeeping advancement in 300 years. More than 4 million were sold. The Accutron watch was the first watch to use plastic parts. It was used to protect the circuitry of the Accutron. It was the first time that a watch was easy to service and more reliable because of fewer parts compared to conventional watches. Accutron watches were the first to be branded and certified to be "railroad approved" and was used by railroad engineers.

Accutron Watches in Space

Accutron watches have traveled outside this planet and landed on the moon in1969 with Apollo 11. The Accutron movement was used on all instrument panel clocks and time keeping mechanisms as the tuning fork movement worked better than mechanical movements in low gravity conditions.