Accutron

Bulova’s “Accutron” watches, first sold in October 1960, use a 360 Hz tuning fork instead of a balance wheel as the timekeeping element. The inventor, Max Hetzel, was born in Basel, Switzerland, and joined the Bulova Watch Company in 1950. The tuning fork was powered by a one-transistor electronic oscillator circuit, so the Accutron qualifies as the second “electronic watch”, following the Hamilton Electric released in 1957. Instead of the ticking sound made by mechanical watches, the Accutron had a faint, high-pitched hum that came from the vibrating tuning fork. A forerunner of modern quartz watches that also keep time with a vibrating resonator, the Accutron was guaranteed to be accurate to one minute per month, or two seconds per day, considerably better than mechanical watches of the time. The Accutron was widely advertised in the print media (including magazines like Life and Ebony) with the tagline “so revolutionary — so accurate, it’s the first timepiece in history that’s guaranteed 99.9977 accurate on your wrist.” An Accutron was buried in a time capsule at New York’s 1964-65 World’s Fair. By 1973, over four million Accutrons had been sold.