Accutron debuted on October 25, 1960

When Accutron debuted on October 25, 1960 it was the most accurate timing mechanism available and the first personal timekeeping advancement in 300 years. The world’s first electronic watch without springs or an escapement, it was operated by an electronically activated tuning fork, instead of ticking, it hummed.

Bulova Accutron had an important place in history as an integral part of 46 missions of the US space program.
Before the technology was available commercially, NASA requested its use in the development of the United States’ greatest single engineering achievement, man’s first landing on the moon. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin placed an Accutron timer in the Sea of Tranquility to control transmissions of data to earth and it still lies there today to be recovered by a future mission.
 

After it’s proven use in space flight, the Accutron 214 was declared an American “Gift of State” by President Lyndon Johnson and, for over a decade, they were given to hundreds of visiting dignitaries. The 214 was made into panel mount clocks, and installed in the instrument panels of thousands of military ship and aircraft including “Air Force One”. 

The story goes that the open movement watches later called Spaceviews were initially given to dealers to showcase the tuning fork technology to customers but when customers started asking dealers to sell them ones like that with the naked view, Bulova saw an oppourtunity and came up with the Alpha case Spaceview followed by other Spaceviews in varying case designs. The Spaceviews were also the most popular graduation gift of their time.

To commemorate it’s past history, this collector set was  made by Bulova in 2010 in a limited once off run of 1000 watches. The movement was built from the ground up faithfully  recreating the tuning fork movement in a larger 42mm case to go with todays standards.The vintage equivalents were much smaller cases with very few variants in bigger cases. The wrist presence of this watch is phenomenal, owing to it’s unique naked looks and I have caught quite a few strangers trying to have a  closer look. Plus the humming is a great conversation starter. Place it to your ear and you can hear it humming in a pleasant tone and some musicans back in the day even used it to tune their musical instruments. 

No other timepiece has had a greater impact on the way we keep time today and can be considered the precursor of thr current quartz movement which uses a quartz tuning fork instead of a steel one like this one.  I loved it so much that I have three sets of these, one for me, one as my sons birth year(2010) watch and one more just because, are a must have. Luckily if you would like to pick one up, though they are sold out,  they still do appear on Ebay once in a while and at below list of 4000USD that they initially sold for, presumably from stock that dealers hoarded.

The last picture is of Richard Branson, the Ambassador for Bulova, sporting a 2010 Spaceview, Enjoy the pics!