Bulova Watches: A History

Bulova watches are one of the most widely recognized name brands in the world for timepieces, and yet the company is a relative newcomer in the timepiece business, only coming into its own in the twentieth century.

The company was founded in 1875 in New York City by Joseph Bulova, a Czech immigrant. This original establishment was a jewelry shop, and Bulova toiled away at the business for decades before beginning production of his own pieces in 1911. These early timepieces were high-quality table clocks and pocket watches, and they were an immediate success. In 1912, Bulova established a factory in Bienne, Switzerland, and his business continued to grow.

In the early 1900s, wristwatches were not common, and most watchmakers believed that the trend would never catch on. However, during the period of the First World War, manufacturers began to see the potential of wristwatches, and consumers began purchasing them. Bulova experimented with compact spring and balance wheel timepieces that could withstand the shocks ordinarily encountered by wristwatches, and he introduced a line of fully jeweled men’s wristwatches in 1919. A full line of ladies’ wristwatches, including diamond-accented pieces, followed five years later.

Joseph Bulova’s interests were not limited to manufacturing timepieces. In 1923, he moved his offices to a skyscraper on Fifth Avenue in New York, and constructed the first observatory ever to be built on top of a skyscraper. All skyscrapers are built to absorb a certain amount of sway; oscillation is necessary to maintain the integrity of the building’s structure against natural forces. Bulova’s observatory, through careful technical evaluation, was able to mitigate the building’s natural movements, and eventually the observatory was able to measure precisely the speed of the rotation of the earth -- the measurement of sidereal time.

Meanwhile, Bulova was hard at work standardizing all the parts of his watches to exacting specifications, to within one ten-thousandth of an inch. Watch repair now became a simple task, as damaged watch parts made to such careful specifications could easily be replaced by working parts made to the same specifications. Other innovations included the world’s first clock radios (1928), automatically rewinding springs for clocks in automobiles (1929), and electric clocks for all purposes (1931).

Joseph Bulova died in 1935, but his company was already well established as one of the most innovative manufacturing companies in the United States. Along with technical innovations, Bulova had introduced new techniques in marketing and distribution, running competitions among customers, for instance, to name new timepieces for top prizes. Bulova also pioneered the use of radio as an advertising vehicle, sponsoring a few dozen top radio programs. In 1941, Bulova presented the first television advertisement: a simple screen image of a clock with a map of the United States, with a voiceover announcing: “America runs on Bulova time.” The cost of the advertisement, which ran on a New York station just before the broadcast of a baseball game, was $9.00.

The Bulova company was very aware of the country’s needs during the Second World War. The board of directors, chaired by Joseph’s son Ardé, announced that the company would sell any products deemed to be necessary for national defense at cost; Bulova worked with various federal agencies designing and manufacturing military watches, specialized timepieces for soldiers, aircraft instruments, and other mechanisms that were within the company’s capacities. Bulova’s wartime radio advertising always encouraged Americans to buy war bonds, and after the war, Ardé founded the Joseph Bulova School of Watchmaking, particularly to train disabled war veterans in the art of watchmaking.

Bulova innovations continued after the war. In 1948, the company developed a photo-finish camera with a precision timer, which became a standard instrument in determining outcomes in track and field events. And in 1953, a company research scientist, Max Hetzel, devised a tiny device that created vibrations by humming at exactly 360 cycles per second (via a micro tuning fork), thus replacing the traditional mechanical spring and balance wheel. This device was finally incorporated into a wristwatch, the Bulova Accutron, in 1960. Never before had a watch been so accurate. In the 1960s, NASA used Accutrons on forty-six missions in its space program.

These innovations have continued to the present day, including the first quartz-based clock in 1969 (and the Bulova Accuquartz wristwatch the following year). The company has long been one of most recognized brand names in the United States. On October 4, 2000, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani proclaimed “Bulova Day” in honor of the company’s 125th anniversary.

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