Bulova

Bulova is a New York based corporation making watches and clocks.

Bulova was founded and incorporated as the J. Bulova Company in 1875 by Joseph Bulova (1851-1936), an immigrant from Bohemia. It was reincorporated under the name Bulova Watch Company in 1923, and became part of the Loews Corporation in 1979.Kenneth T. Jackson: "The Encyclopedia of New York City": The New York Historical Society; Yale University Press; 1995. P. 168.] .

Bulova established its operations in Woodside, New York and Flushing, New York, where it made innovations in watchmaking, and developed a number of watchmaking tools. Its horological innovations included the Accutron watch which used resonating tuning forks as a means of regulating the time keeping function.

Bulova also was at the forefront in another arena. On July 1, 1941, Bulova paid $9 for the first television commercial ever broadcast on American commercial television, a placement on New York television station WNBT (now WNBC) just before a baseball game telecast between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. A test pattern, featuring the WNBT call letters, was modified to look like a clock, complete with functioning hands. The Bulova logo, with the phrase "Bulova Watch Time", was shown in the lower right-hand quadrant of the test pattern. A photograph of the NBC camera telecasting the test pattern-advertisement for that first official TV commercial can be seen at http://www.earlytelevision.org/images/rca_bulova_ad-1.jpg

The Joseph Bulova School of Watchmaking was founded in 1945 by Arde Bulova, Chairman of the Board, initially to provide training for disabled veterans after the Second World War.

"Accutron" [ [http://watch-wiki.de/index.php?title=Bulova_Accutron Watch-Wiki Accutron] ] tuning fork watches, first sold in October 1960 by Bulova, use a 360 hertz tuning fork to drive a mechanical gear train. The inventor, Max Hetzel, was born in Basel, Switzerland, and joined the Bulova Watch Company of Bienne, Switzerland, in 1948. This outstanding engineer was the first one to use an electronic device, a transistor, in a wrist watch. Thus, Max Hetzel developed the first watch in the world that truly deserved the qualification "electronic": the world-famous "Bulova Accutron". More than 4 million were sold until production stopped in 1977.

They also were subjects of the other famous space era rivalry with Omega Watches for being the first watch on the moon. Ultimately, the Omega Speedmaster Professional chronograph wristwatch (known as the "Moon watch") was designated by NASA for use by the astronauts in all manned space missions, becoming the first watch on the moon on the wrist of Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin.

However, all instrument panel clocks and time-keeping mechanisms in the spacecraft on those missions were Bulova Accutrons with tuning fork movements, because at the time, NASA did not know how well a mechanical movement would work in zero gravity conditions. The Bulova company currently manufactures a limited edition "Astronaut" model under its Accutron line of watches. The back of the watch case is autographed by Buzz Aldrin. The tuning fork movement has been discontinued by Bulova, and the current Astronaut model features automatic ETA SA movement, making it similar to the rival Omega.

In 2008 a Bulova Automatic wristwatch, lost overboard by a sailor in 1941, was found after 67 years on the seabed and returned to its owner. It still works today. [cite news
publisher=Mail Online
title=Watch that's back from the seabed... And it's still working, after 67 years
date=June 9, 2008
url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1025033/Watch-thats-seabed--And-working-67-years.html]

On October 5, 2007 Citizen Holdings Company announced it would purchase Bulova Corp. for $247 million. [cite news
publisher=New York Times
title=Japan: Watchmaker To Acquire Bulova
date=October 5, 2007
url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9906E5DC1539F936A35753C1A9619C8B63] On January 10th 2008 Citizen bought the Bulova Watch Company. Together they are the world's largest watchmaker.

Currently Bulova designs, manufactures, and markets several different brands, including: the signature "Bulova", the affordable "Caravelle", the dressy/formal Swiss-made "Wittnauer Swiss", and the sportier Swiss-made "Accutron".

References

External links

* [http://www.bulova.com/ Bulova home page]
* [http://members.iinet.net.au/~fotoplot/acc.htm The Accutron Watch Page]