If it's good enough for Frank Sinatra, it's good enough for me. This vintage watch restoration turned out to be so tough I had to go to Switzerland to finish it. Join me and expert dial restorer Lindsay Stämpfli (arcstampfli.com/) as we try and put this rusty 1950s vintage Bulova together.
You can find Lindsay here
arcstampfli.com/
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Big Thanks to Chris from CLM Watchmaking for the movement
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My second channel launched; please do go have a look!
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#vintagewatch #vintagewatches #watchrestoration #restoration
The history of Bulova
When Josef Bulova (1851-1935) departed his native Bohemia in 1870 he was part of a wave of Czech immigrants who sailed across the ocean in search of the American dream during the second half of the 19th century. At the time, there were 20,000 Czechs living in the United States and Bulova settled in Manhattan along with many others which became a hub for the community where you could buy not only Czech food but also newspapers and magazines. As a certified watch maker, Bulova soon found a job with the growing jeweller Tiffany & Co. America was in the midst of an industrial and technological revolution which inspired the young Bulova to start his own company in lower Manhattan 1875 under the name of J. Bulova & Co. It became the starting point for this iconic brand.
During the first three decades, the company sold mainly clocks, jewlery, and pocket watches and was so successful that in 1912 it opened a factory in Biel, Switzerland for production of parts and assembly. With the onset of the first world war a lot changed, including the concept of watches, and Josef and his son Arde, who now worked for the company as vice president, moved from producing pocket watches to wrist watches.
In the 1920s, Josefs grandson, who was not only a splendid entrepreneur but also a huge talent in marketing, led the company forward. He offered a $1000 reward to the pilot who would become the first to cross the Atlantic ocean without a stopover, an achievement acomplished by the legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1927 who went from New York to Paris in 33,5 hours. He did not only collect the prize money but also became the face of the Lone Eagle wristwatch, which commemorated the record flight. When it came out in 1927, it was produced in 5,000 pieces and sold together with a photo of Lindbergh. Within three days, the first collection had sold out. Bulova continued to produce the watch during the following years in 14k white gold and it went on to become one of the company’s bestselling watches of all times.
Bulova moved into the new field of radio advertising in the 1920s, and reached millions of Americans with what was probably the first radio commercial for a watch that aired at exactly eight o’clock and announced that “At the tone, it’s eight o’clock, Bulova watch time,” which let the listeners adjust their watches to the correct time. During the 1940s, Bulova also became a leader in television advertising where they declared that “America runs on Bulova time.” This ten second ad from July 1941 became the first television commercial to legally air in the country. For this Bulova paid $9, equivalent to rougly $190 in today’s money.
In the 1950s Bulova became the sponsor for the televized Frank Sinatra Show .
Precision and technological research were central tenets for Bulova from the early days. When the company moved from lower Manhattan to Fifth Avenue in 1927, it set up an observatory on the roof, the first observatory ever built on top of a skyscraper, to determine universal time precisely. During the second world war, the board of directors adopted a resolution to sell products for national defense and cooporated with the US government to produce military watches, specialized timekeeping, aircraft instruments, and critical torpedo mechanisms and detonators. Today, retro watches such as the Bulova Hack 98A255 are based on this tradition.
After the war, Bulova set up the Josef Bulova School of Watchmaking to help handicapped veterans aquire watch skills. The school, which stayed open until 1993, allowed for barrier-free access with automatic doors and extra wide elevators and graduates found good jobs in the watchmaking industry.
In 1960, the company’s most iconic watch - the Accutron - which paved the way for the modern quartz watch came. The Accutron was incredibly accurate with a deviation of only one minute per month . It became the official state gift to world leaders and other dignitaries from the White House under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Bulova also made it to the moon as NASA asked the company to build the Accutron into its space program computers as part of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiements Package,
There is more to say about Bulova, but i'll save it for another video!