The
Bulova Corporation was founded in 1875 by a Czech immigrant named
Joseph Bulova, at a small premises in Maiden Lane, New York City. Little
did anyone know at the time that this tiny fledgling enterprise was to
grow into an empire that would irrevocably change the world of time and
one day help put a man on the moon.
At
that time, accurate clocks had already been built for many years. Said
to have been the original idea of Galileo Galilei in 1582, but first
built in practice by Christiaan Huygens, in 1656, pendulum clocks could
already keep time to within a tenth of a second a day. With the advent
of the mainspring, to replace the weights that had traditionally powered
these early pendulum clocks, Huygens also invented the spiral balance
spring, still found in mechanical clocks and watches to this day. Like
the swing of a pendulum, the coiling and uncoiling of this spiral
balance spring had a natural periodicity that regulated the unwinding of
the mainspring. This new mechanism was able to replace the pendulum and
make the clock more compact and portable. By 1761, John Harrison, a
self-taught clock maker, had produced a self-contained spring and
balance wheel marine chronometer, fully portable and accurate to within a
fifth of a second per day.
By
1911, Joseph Bulova had set up a manufacturing business to build and
sell high quality boudoir clocks, table clocks and pocket watches. The
business expanded rapidly as news of these fine timepieces spread across
the American marketplace. By the following year, Joseph Bulova was able
to establish his first dedicated watch manufacturing and assembly plant
in Bienne, Switzerland, building only quality fully jeweled movements.
At
about the time of the First World War, there were many European watch
manufacturers that said that the wearing of a watch on the wrist would
never be a popular alternative to the pocket watch. Joseph Bulova,
creating a pioneering spirit that was to become the 'culture' of Bulova,
started to experiment with compact spring and balance wheel timepieces
that could withstand the impacts and shocks of being worn on the wrist.
Out of only a handful of manufacturers of the day, Bulova introduced its
first line of fully jeweled men's wristwatches in 1919; the company
started to grow, exponentially.
The
link between horology, the study of time, and astronomy, the scientific
study of the universe, has always been inseparable. From the first
calendars, designed to track the phases of the moon, to the early
clocks, designed to measure periods of daylight, astronomers and
horologists have been working together to try to define the universe. In
1920 the first quartz clock was invented by J W Horton and W A Marrison
and built at the Bell Laboratories. It took up a whole room, unlike the
watches we know today, but it kept time to within one second every ten
years; it was the most accurate clock of its time.
Our
watches today keep time in relation to a 'solar' day. A solar day is
the time it takes for the earth to rotate once about its axis and to
return to the same position relative to the rising of the sun. Because
the earth has continued on its journey around the sun during those 24
hours, it takes an extra four minutes of rotation for the earth to
exactly reposition itself with respect to the sun. A 'sidereal' day is
the time it takes for the earth to rotate once about its own axis,
without reference to the sun. If our watches ran on sidereal time, about
four minutes less than the solar day, we would soon find ourselves
going to work during the night. But in 1920, a second was defined as
being 1/86,400th of a solar day.
In
1920, Bulova moved to 580 Fifth Avenue, where it engaged in the
ambitious project of building the first observatory to ever be
constructed on the top of a skyscraper. Ambitious because, although it
was now high above the heat radiation levels of the ground which disturb
optical clarity in telescopes, it would be subject to the movement of
the building. This oscillation in tall buildings is necessary to
maintain the integrity of the structure against the forces of nature.
Much technical evaluation had to be done to mitigate the natural
movement of the building but eventually the observatory was taking
highly precise readings of the speed of rotation of the earth, the
measurement of sidereal time. In conjunction with the quartz clock at
the Bell Laboratories, it was eventually determined that the earth did
not rotate at a uniform speed; the definition of the second was fatally
flawed, it meant nothing. We now needed a new definition for the
fundamental unit of time. It would be another forty years before the
world accepted that new definition.
In
the early days of watch making, for Bulova as with other manufacturers,
the individual components of a watch movement were all made by hand.
Each watch was built individually with many adjustments and corrections
being made to the components as they were being assembled and tested.
The process was time consuming and costly, not only during the
manufacturing phase but also afterwards, for maintenance and repair. If a
watch needed a new part, it had to be hand crafted and refined to fit
the individual watch under repair. This not only added to the cost of
manufacture but also made the after sales servicing of watches very
expensive and time consuming.
Following
on with the company's pioneering and innovative spirit, which was to
become its culture, in 1923, Bulova perfected a new technique in watch
manufacturing, the standardization of all parts. Because each part was
now built to an exacting specification of within one ten thousandth of
an inch, the parts could be freely interchanged with any other Bulova
watch of the same model. Bulova had driven a revolution in the watch
industry, the rapid and low cost manufacturing, servicing and repair of
watches. Other watch making companies quickly tried to change their
manufacturing processes in competition with Bulova, but they were too
late, Bulova was already ahead and now unstoppable.
In
1924, the President of the United States, President Calvin Coolidge,
awarded a watch to Stanley "Bucky" Harris, player-manager of the World
Series, it was a Bulova watch and to commemorate the occasion, Bulova
created the 'President' watch. It was in this same year that Bulova
introduced the first full line of ladies' watches, including
diamond-accented pieces. The age of 'jewelry in watches' had just begun.
In
the 1920s, radio was a new phenomenon, much like the internet today, no
one really understood the power of this new advertising medium. No one
other than Bulova that was, who, continuing in their rich culture as
pioneers and innovators, created the very first radio commercial in
1926, "At the tone, it's 8 P.M., B-U-L-O-V-A, Bulova time".
Bulova
have always been a company, driven towards scientific and technical
advances, helping mankind to achieve new limits with the aid of their
inventions. So it was no surprise to the nation when, in 1926, Ard
Bulova, son of the founder, Joseph Bulova, offered a prize of $1,000 for
the first pilot to successfully make a solo non-stop flight across the
Atlantic. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh's epic flight from New York to
Paris, won the prize. Bulova, already convinced of his likely success,
were able to distribute 5,000 Lone Eagle watches, complete with pictures
of Lindberg, the very next day in Paris. Over the next three years they
sold nearly 50,000 of these commemorative watches. It was also in 1927
that Bulova Watch Corporation went public on the American Stock
Exchange, giving all Americans an opportunity to share in its success.
In
1928, Bulova introduced the first clock radios to the world. Now
America could wake up to their favorite radio station and set their
watches to Bulova watch time.
Up
until 1929, the clocks found in automobiles and recreational powered
watercraft had all been spring driven mechanical clocks, requiring the
owner to constantly remember to manually wind these clocks to keep them
running on time. There had been some experimentation with the use of
miniature electric motors to replace these mechanical spring mechanisms
but the generally humid conditions were unfavorable for these early
electric clocks. Bulova found the solution by replacing the manually
wound mainspring with a solenoid driven short duration spring. The short
duration spring would take about one and one half minutes to wind down
at which point an electrical contact would be made which would energize
the solenoid and rewind the spring. This rhythmic characteristic 'click'
every one and one half minutes kept the clock continually running
without the unreliability of the earlier electric motors. Soon, this new
design of clock was to find its way into many of the automobiles
manufactured in America and numerous runabouts, the powered watercrafts
that were rapidly taking over the inland waterways of the affluent
Midwest.
1931,
saw Bulova begin to produce the first electric clocks. With the
expansion of the power grid, electrical power was now commonplace in
many of America's homes. These clocks not only included mantle clocks
and wall clocks for the home but electric clocks for use in store
windows, offices, train stations and airports. All across America,
Bulova electric clocks could be found, keeping time for the nation.
During this same period, Bulova became the first watch and clock
manufacturer to start spending more than $1 million a year on
advertising. As America entered the depression years, Bulova responded
by supporting its retailers and customers in providing payment terms for
many of its best selling products.
Bulova
continued to pioneer new techniques in the marketing and distribution
of its brands throughout the 30s and 40s. In 1932 it ran a competition
to challenge its customers to name the latest timepiece in its
collection, one of the best quality products of the day. It retailed for
$24.75, the equivalent of about $300 today, and the top prize was
$1000.
1935
was the year in which Joseph Bulova, the founder and chief innovator of
Bulova Watch Company, died, but the legend lived on. The corporate
culture he had strived hard to instill was more alive than ever, working
towards new heights of technological advancement and achievement that
not even Joseph Bulova himself had dreamt possible.
Bulova
continued to pioneer the use of radio in the promotion if its products
well into the 40s. Bulova were sponsors of all of the top twenty radio
shows of the time. When in 1941, the opportunity was presented for
television advertising, again it was Bulova that produced the first ever
TV commercial. This early commercial was simply a television screen
image of a clock and a map of the United States with the voice "America
runs on Bulova time".
America
was now in the 'war years' and in the same year of the very first
television commercial, Ard Bulova, now chairman of the board of Bulova,
announced that the board of directors had passed a resolution to enable
the company to sell products, vital for national defense, at cost.
Already being a leader in precision time technology, Bulova worked with
the US government throughout the Second World War to manufacture, at
cost, military watches, specialized timepieces, aircraft instruments,
critical torpedo timing mechanisms and mechanical timer fuses.
By
1944, a quarter of all radio advertising was being used to encourage
Americans to invest in War Bonds and Stamps and so the familiar Bulova
radio commercial was adapted to the statement "B-U-L-O-V-A, Bulova Time,
Time to Buy United States War Bonds and Stamps."
After
America won the war in 1945, Ard Bulova, in memory of his father,
founded the Joseph Bulova School of Watchmaking. The school was
established in order to help teach disabled veterans the skills of watch
making. The graduates of this school were assured employment through
over 1,500 positions being made available by jewelers all across
America. The school was entirely funded by the Bulova Foundation.
In
1948, Bulova began researching and developing a new generation of
commercial timing devises combining, for the first time, a photo-finish
camera with a precision electronic timer. These were to become the
standard instruments of competitive track sports.
Bulova
research scientists and engineers had continued to experiment in
alternative, more accurate timekeeping technology. Since the days of the
quartz clock with Bell Laboratories, Bulova engineers were convinced
that a stable constant source of vibration would be the answer to a
replacement for the mechanical spring and balance wheel of a
conventional watch. The problem was how to make it small enough to fit
into a wristwatch. The existing quartz clock was the size of a room and
the ability to produce microelectronics, capable of reducing the high
vibration speed of a quartz crystal to a regular pulse suitable for
controlling a watch, was still many years away.
In
1953, Bulova research scientist, Max Hetzel, working in the Bulova
laboratory in Bienne, Switzerland, came up with the solution. Accurate
to within two seconds a day, this first true revolution in the watch
making industry since Christiaan Huygens' pendulum clock of 1656, didn't
tick anymore, it hummed. A tiny battery caused a micro tuning fork to
vibrate at exactly 360 cycles a second. The challenge was to bring this
invention from the research laboratory to the production line as a
commercially viable product, suitable for mass-production.
While
work progressed on Max Hetzel's humming watch, Bulova continued to
recognize the new trends of the industry by introducing move versions of
its popular self-winding watch. In 1953, Bulova introduced the
'Wrist-Alarm', an entirely new concept in wristwatches.
In
1954, Omar Bradley agreed to join Bulova as Chairman of the Board of
the Bulova Research and Development Laboratories. Bradley was a Second
World War general and retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He
was well know to the board of Bulova from the days of research and
development in the war effort and widely acknowledged for his clear
thinking in strategic matters. In the same year, Bulova released the now
famous, Bulova 23, the self-winding, waterproof, 23-jewel watch with
the unbreakable mainspring. Someday, all watches will be built this way.
In
1955, an independent survey by A.C. Neilson Company showed that
Americans saw more national advertising for Bulova products than for any
other products, in any other industry, in the world. Bulova continued
to step up their advertising and sponsorship campaigns and in 1956 they
co-sponsored the "Jackie Gleason Show", the largest sponsorship
commitment of any watch or jewelry-related business in history.
In
1958, Omar Bradley, having already made a substantial contribution to
guiding the development of Max Hetzel's revolutionary new timekeeper,
and assigning William Bennett, Bulova's chief engineer in New York, to
spearhead the commercialization of the design, became the chairman of
Bulova Watch Company. He remained in this position, driving the company
to ever new heights of achievement, until he retired in 1973 at the age
of 80.
In
1960, the Bulova Accutron, as it was now called, the revolutionary
timekeeping breakthrough invention of Max Hetzel, was ready for
commercial sales in the US. The Bulova Accutron watch was to set in
motion an unstoppable revolution in the watch making industry. Never
before had a watch been available that was so accurate, not at any
price. This new watch had truly done away with the spiral balance spring
and escapement mechanism that ticked, having replaced it with a
miniature tuning fork which hummed, keeping time to an accuracy of
within one minute per month.
It
was with this timekeeping mechanism that Bulova, the same year, entered
the space race, having been invited by NASA. to incorporate this new
ultra accurate electronic clock, into NASA's space program computers.
The Bulova Accutron was used on a total of 46 missions of the US Space
Program and went on to become the White House's official Gift of State,
as announced by President Lyndon B Johnson.
But
Bulova never rested on any one invention, and continued to perfect and
redevelop its Phototimer clock for track and field events. By now, the
technology existed for infrared sensing devises that could automatically
detect the flare of the starting pistol and set in motion the event
timer. All this could happen at the same instant that the competing
athletes left their marks.
Throughout
the history of time, the search for standard time and the development
of time zones across America, was never more important than is was for
the early railroads. It was in 1883, that the railroads first introduced
the idea of having a standard time with time zones, but it took until
1918, and the introduction of the Standard Time Act, for their
recommendations to become law. The railroad personnel always needed to
carry the most accurate timepieces of the day and were still using
pocket watches in the early sixties. It was in 1962 that the Railroad
Commission certified the Bulova Accutron watch as the first wristwatch
to ever be approved for use by the railroad, thus documenting the great
achievement of the Bulova company.
It
was also in 1962, that Bulova introduced the Caravelle line of jeweled
watches, priced to compete with existing non-jeweled watches in the same
market. By 1968, the Caravelle was the largest selling jeweled watch in
America.
Bulovar
continued to promote the expanding sales if its Bulova Accutron watches
with commercials on many popular prime time television shows in the mid
sixties. In 1967, the Accutron clocks were the only clocks to be found
onboard Air Force One.
In
1967, forty years after the standard measurement of time was proved to
be inadequate, a new standard was finally agreed. The second was
redefined as being exactly 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the cesium
atom's resonant frequency. With the acceptance of the cesium atomic
clocks, a new era of time signal generation developed.
In
1968, the Bulova Satellite Clock, the world's first public clock
regulated by satellite time signals, was inaugurated by Gustavo Diaz
Ordaz, the President of Mexico. The clock was installed on the top of
Mexico's tallest building, the Torre Latino Americana.
When
Apollo 11, landed on the moon in the Sea of Tranquility, in 1969, it
carried with it an Accutron watch movement. This Bulova timer was left
behind to control the transmission of vital data that was to form the
basis of further experiments over the years ahead. One of the
experiments in which the moon-based Bulova Accutron was critical was the
precise measurement of the distance of the moon from the earth and the
changes in that distance over time.
In
1969, Bulova introduced the first quartz-based clock, the Accuquartz.
The vital electronic components required to count the thousands of
oscillations per second produced by the vibrating piezoelectric quartz
crystal, could now be contain within the case of a clock. But the
miniaturization process continued at Bulova until, the following year,
it announced the arrival of the Bulova Accuquartz men's calendar
wristwatch. This watch, with an 18K gold case, retailed for $1,325 and
was the first quartz crystal watch available commercially in the United
States.
Continuing
with Bulova's commitment to the NASA space program, in 1973, three
specially designed Accutron portable alarm clocks were placed on board
the Skylab. The Skylab was the world's first space laboratory and was
launched from Cape Kennedy.
During
that year, Bulova won the world's first design competition for
solid-state digital watches at the Prix de la Ville de Gen ve
watch-styling competition, the world's most prestigious international
watch-styling competition. Bulova also won two of the three honorable
mentions awarded at the competition.
In
1976, Bulova was ready to introduce a complete line of Bulova Accutron
Quartz movement watches for men. The National Air and Space Museum was
opened by the Smithsonian Institute the same year, and in one of its
main features, a replica of the NASA Skylab, was an Accutron "space
alarm" clock identical to the ones mounted onboard the actual Skylab.
The following year, Bulova released its full line of Accutron Quartz
movement watches for ladies.
Bulova
became a full subsidiary of the Loews Corporation in 1979, assuring it
the support and capital required to compete in the ever more demanding
world of time technology and development. The company continued to
record firsts in innovation when it unveiled the world's thinnest wall
clock, the Bulova Dimension, in 1983. The depth of the clock measured
just 5/8th of an inch. In 1986, Bulova began to create another new
category in timepieces when it released the first miniature clock. The
popularity and collect ability of these clocks has grown rapidly with
Bulova again leading the market with entire classifications of themed
groupings and limited edition pieces.
Bulova
becomes the official supplier to the U.S. Olympic team in 1987,
providing watches for both the winter games in Calgary and the summer
games in Seoul.
Bulova
watch Company, Inc. changed its name in 1988 to Bulova Corporation to
better reflect the company's growth into new and different timekeeping
products. During the nineties it expanded its distribution licenses into
South America, the Far East and Europe while reestablishing the
Accutron as the premier brand of the Bulova Corporation.
Bulova is one of the most recognized brand names in watches.
