Teddy Baldassarre
Bulova Precisionist: The Most Underrated Movement in the Watch Industr
Newcomers to the watch appreciation game can be forgiven for reflexively, and solely, crediting the Japanese with bringing electronics into the mainstream of the watch industry, but the embryonic phase of the technology took place in the United States. And the most accurate electronic movement on the market today emerged from the synergy between one of America's most historic home-grown watch manufacturers and one of Japan's most innovative pioneers of timekeeping technology. It's called the Precisionist, it's exclusive to Bulova, and while you may not have heard of it or know much about it, it's becoming a fixture in several Bulova watches that increasingly demand enthusiast attention. Bulova, founded in New York City in 1875 by Bohemian immigrant Joseph Bulova, was one of the first watchmakers in the world to seriously explore the development of electronics in wristwatch movements. In 1960, just a few years after another American watch manufacturer, Hamilton, had introduced its flawed but groundbreaking electric-powered Ventura (more on that here), Bulova unveiled its own high-tech timepiece, the Accutron Spaceview 214. The watch took its numerical designation from its movement, Caliber 214, a revolutionary mechanism in which the balance wheel, which drives the timekeeping in a mechanical movement, was replaced by a tuning fork, powered by a one-transistor electronic oscillator. This system ensured an oscillation rate of 360 hertz - nearly 150 times faster than tha...
