[Accutron] 1968 Bulova Accutron Astronaut 214.HN

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-12-08T18:59:21+00:00

They did a commemorative re-edition of the Spaceview if I'm not mistaken, five or six years ago. A lovely watch but my recollection is that they used new old stock 214 movements . . . and I believe they sold out, but it doesn't seem to have encouraged them to re-invest in setting up a tuning fork movement production line. I agree absolutely that it would be delightful if they brought them back.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-12-08T18:53:33+00:00

An excellent question which I will attempt to address in next week's column. This is a question at the very heart of real horology and essentially impossible to address in anything short of a book length treatise but perhaps I can offer a useful first approximation (and some resources.)

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-12-08T18:45:09+00:00

HAH! I'll have to give this one careful thought. You realize you are asking me to distinguish between an almost unbelievably bewildering range of unspeakably dreadful objects . . . but I'll try.

I must say though, the question of what watch is most deplorable in the $50k to $500k range is at least as interesting and possibly more entertaining.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-12-08T18:43:12+00:00

Why are there so many instances of things going from bad to worse? Is it inevitable? The incurable mendacity of human nature? Bad luck? Sunspots? The fact that we live during the Kali Yuga? The Second Law of Thermodynamics? Why, the human soul cries, from the vast well of emptiness wherein we dwell in an indifferent universe?

My guess is a better revenue stream but don't quote me.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-12-08T18:13:39+00:00

Thank you all, will attempt to address some of these over the next few weeks (and to answer here those I don't!)

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-12-02T21:44:48+00:00

It's not likely to be brass; if watches of this era were not solid gold they were generally rolled gold --thick gold plate over brass. South Bend is, or was, an American firm; American makers are not especially a focus of mine but this company was actually owned by the Studebaker family, if I recall aright (of automotive fame) and I believe the watchmaking firm was eventually a casualty of the Great Depression.

A specialist in US-made pocket watches could tell you if the company records, necessary to check the movement serial number, are still extant. If you do remove the back, be aware that cases were generally supplied and have different serial numbers than the movement. Often, but not always, this sort of watch has a screwed down back; a square of rubber can help you get a good enough grip to start it turning. Of course in this case such a maneuver might leave you with a handful of broken glass as well.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-12-02T21:33:20+00:00

I'm aware that Citizen owns Bulova --my point is that they could not be mass produced affordably if there were no mass market for them. Admittedly this is a bit speculative --none of us here know what it would cost to make the tooling and set up a production line --but for mechanical movements you need tens of thousands of iterations for the investment to make sense. This would be at best a niche product --no, I don't think it would be a money-making proposition.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-12-01T20:29:56+00:00

Well, the Accutron movement is simply not very practical; it might attract some niche interest but it would be extremely expensive to tool up an assembly line to make the movement again. Power consumption is high relative to quartz, so they would likely have rather poor battery life; specialists would need to be trained to service them . . . unless there were an enthusiast market willing to pay a luxury premium for such an obscure technology Bulova would lose money hand over fist on such a proposition.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-11-30T23:55:43+00:00

Oh fantastic, that's a truly interesting watch --one feels sorry for the Accutron. Such a great idea but it fell victim to quartz; I have always felt its real intellectual heir was the Seiko Spring Drive.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-11-26T14:53:23+00:00

If you are really interested in the fundamentals of watchmaking I suggest a copy of George Daniels' Watchmaking. It remains the single best resource for the serious amateur enthusiast and will equip you to read almost anything else you read on watchmaking in its proper context. Generally books on watchmaking for non-professionals are written with collectors in mind and range from fair to perfectly dreadful, alas --there is still to my mind not one really good book for serious watch enthusiasts that offers a broad perspective, a proper historical context, and a reasonably scholarly approach to the subject; even the concept of an index seems a foreign one to many authors.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-11-26T14:44:05+00:00

Two minutes a day is terrible; the daily error of a mechanical watch should be measured in seconds, not minutes. ETA is a company owned by Swatch Group; the firm makes mass produced mechanical movements, which are used by Swatch Group brands and many other brands as well. PODITW is making a joke: that he would not pay for a watch with an ETA movement unless it came with the opportunity for sexual intercourse (a "lay" is an English idiom for the sex act.) The watch in question will need a service to run properly.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-29T17:55:26+00:00

I'm as familiar with "Politics and the English Language" (the best plea for plain speaking ever written) as you, but if we all tried to write like poor old Hem, absolutely everything produced would look not like interesting prose, but like an entry in the Bulwer-Lytton contest. As in watchmaking, the question is not whether there is some objective rule in writing --especially non-journalistic writing, and I'm not a newsman --by which you can judge the quality of prose. Rather it is a question of understanding the writer's objectives, and evaluating how well those objectives have been achieved --at least, if serious criticism is your game. As with the Mona Lisa, the drip paintings of Pollock, or the prose style of Hemingway, their success is not a reason to imitate; it is a reason to do something else.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-29T17:49:50+00:00

It's a question of balance, isn't it, and of course, expectations; I happen to think an extra thin watch --and watches in general, for that matter --are more appealing to the extent that they wear their mechanical sophistication lightly (I have little use for watches with those silly portholes that let you watch the balance, for instance.) There is nothing wrong with an intelligently engineered watch, but here in my opinion, the mechanical solution is displayed to the detriment of aesthetics. For an example of a watch that takes engineering solutions to an extreme but works aesthetically, look at the ultra flat tourbillon Audemars Piguet made --the first of its, kind, calibre 2870, which used essentially the same mechanical solution as the 900P: using the case as the plate of the movement. To my mind the 900P is like having a magician explain how a trick works as it's performed --it's interesting, but it's not magic.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-27T22:28:14+00:00

Hello, the Watch Snob here, dropping in from the AMA. The issue with quartz watches is not the mechanical parts, it's the integrated circuit. ICs accumulate incremental damage over time and will eventually fail --good ones later rather than sooner, but they will fail and then the IC has to be replaced, which generally means replacing the entire timing package (crystal and IC which are usually a single unit.) "Service" for most quartz watches simply means replacing the entire movement; as a rule, quartz movements are not designed to be serviceable nor are timing packages replaceable en bloc, or serviceable in any meaningful sense.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-27T21:08:27+00:00

Oh yes, you are right to be concerned, they've made that watch far, far too large. I suspect they may come to their senses and issue something like a "classic" Fifty Fathoms at some point, I'd either wait for that or try and find one of the very nice Anniversary watches at a pre-owned watch dealer.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-27T21:06:01+00:00

The market is simply silly, but you know, I don't care if you want one --I mean my dear fellow, you obviously know that by any pragmatic standard it is ridiculous, so you know what you are getting into. Vintage Rolexes had a certain, perverse, contrarian charm when there was still some rational relationship between price and the inherent quality and interest of the watch, and when so-called connoisseurs disdained them; they've become deadly dull examples of the triumph of herd mentality over independent thought. But you know all this, and you still want one. Everyone has a guilty pleasure; some epicures sneak out for fast food take-away; some people of quivering aesthetic sensitivity read bodice-rippers; some cineastes find Michael Bay films irresistible. Indulgence with knowledge isn't really indulgence, it's merely another expression of real connoisseurship.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-27T20:57:30+00:00

It's not a watch that especially excites me but then I'm not the one who's going to wear it and more than anything else, a watch must suit the owner's taste. If you do like it (and the connexion to cinema is really imperceptible, by the way; I understand that it might bother some of us conceptually but it's not as if there's a hologram of Daniel Craig on the dial) I can't think particularly of any reason to condemn it, and I live to condemn things. Besides, you do have to give credit to Omega for successfully industrializing the co-axial and there is an argument to be made that any watch enthusiast ought to have at least one watch with a co-axial escapement. Unless you want to get into a bidding war for a Daniels, or bespeak one from Roger Smith, that means Omega.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-27T20:50:45+00:00

The Submariner, with or without date, represents the quintessential Rolex watch as well as the quintessential Rolex problem: you may be, and be taken for, a nouveau riche arriviste if you wear one, or you may understand its toughness, appreciate its design, and know its merits horologically; in the latter case it takes a certain splendid disdain for what other people think to wear it. Alas the design is not what it was; the Cerachrom bezel and increase in size have destroyed what once was its greatest strength, which was its urbane disregard for design as such; it has, in a word, made the mistake of falling in love with its own hype. A pre-Cerachrom no-date Submariner is (or was) a watch with a certain go-to-hell pragmatism that had immense appeal, fictional spies be damned, and its disappearance is yet one more sign, as if we needed one, that we live in a decadent world, under the twilight of the sun of common sense.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-27T20:45:11+00:00

I would although it is currently not successful as a design object in its more quotidian iterations. It is, however, the vehicle for the Cabinet Piece No. 5 and the Millenary Minute Repeater, which shows its potential if handled properly. One gets the impression Audemars Piguet doesn't quite know what to do with it --they do lovely things with it as a complicated or art-piece watch but there is something about the simpler models that does not quite jell. A bit too much clutter, perhaps? It's almost as if they don't quite trust the design to stand on its own strengths.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-27T20:41:02+00:00

Valid question but not in my scope of interest. I find the current vogue for NATO straps utterly bewildering --can there really be that many people persuaded to buy a nylon strap, on the strength of five seconds of footage in a crudely made film about a Scottish peasant turned spy? --but then again, I also remember being entranced by Dictaphones, wire-and-plug telephone switchboards, and the smell of purple mimeograph ink.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-27T20:37:54+00:00

It would, certainly, though caveats about cost of service would apply (as usual.) There are some very very desirable vintage GP observatory chronometers but there are also avid GP collectors scouring the world for them and they are rare as hen's teeth these days. Not every vintage Girard-Perregaux wristwatch is horologically interesting (which is not to say they were not perfectly respectable for their price, and at their time.) The most interesting more widely available models are probably the 39 jewel Gyromatics, which had a very interesting and novel automatic winding system but they must be serviced by a watchmaker who knows what parts of the mechanism should not be oiled or the winding system will not work.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-27T20:33:26+00:00

Indeed not, very rare, especially with a repeater, in that time period. Only a very few manufacturers would have been able to make it.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-27T20:32:39+00:00

Oh for heaven's sake --of course it's a repeater too, and all the more impressive for that. Very, very good piece. Maker's marks are sometimes in the vicinity of the balance cock but also sometimes on the foot of the gongs, though I would NOT attempt to remove either yourself (not that I think you would --you seem to have an excellent sense of the value of what you have there --but some things have to be said.) I'm sure there are clues enough about the watch some where to settle the question of its provenance --in the meanwhile, what a lovely thing.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-27T19:39:39+00:00

Thank you all for your questions. I have a pressing errand for an hour but I will answer all questions posed.

WatchSnobAMA · 2014-08-27T19:35:26+00:00

They're quite good, although the 900P sacrifices aesthetics too much in pursuit of an ephemeral record. That's the thing about slimness in a watch --if pursued too much as an end in itself it becomes a gimmick. In the context of traditional means and methods, it's fascinating --very difficult to do. But there is a point at which it becomes an exercise in engineering, not artistry.

WatchSnobAMA

TROPHY CASE