Last year my father-in-law passed away. I blogged about it at the time. I also blogged about some items I inherited after he passed.
Watches.
I was given my wife's father's watches.
There were half a dozen of them. You can check out the blog post: HERE. Most were of the wind-up variety, but a couple required batteries to run, a fairly new Seiko, and a vintage Bulova. I'd seen the Bulova at my in-laws's house several times. To be honest, I didn't know anything about the watch until my mother-in-law, for a Christmas present, gave it to me again. This time it ran beautifully.
I've collected several watches over the years--not so many now. The ones I really like don't require batteries, and they're harder to come by. But I knew nothing of the Accutron models. What I've learned about them, after doing a little research, is fascinating.
Here's some information about the watches from a website:
While a mechanical watch uses a mainspring and a balance wheel, Bulova came up with a battery that makes a tuning fork vibrate – the tuning fork replaces the balance wheel as a regulator, powered by electromagnets attached to a battery-powered transistor circuit. The vibrations of the tuning fork are impossible to see – the Accutron’s frequency is 360Hz; later models from other brands vibrated at even higher frequencies. The mechanism is very small compared to a conventional watch mechanism, and is virtually invisible. A tooth of the ratchet wheel measures 0.025 mm in width and 0.01 mm in height. The wheel itself has a diameter of 2.4 mm and carries 300 teeth. The material used here is beryllium copper, which can be easily milled, especially in such miniscule size ranges.
A tuning fork--are you kidding me? Who'd have thunk it?
I guess smarter people than me. You can access the website: HERE.
My wife remembers her father wearing the watch and listening to it hum--you can actually hear the hum when you hold it up to your ear...no "tick-tock," just hum. It's very cool!
I have several favorites out of all the watches I've collected--most used to belong to my dad. Over time those watches have stopped working. No wonder since many are over seventy years old. But I'll be adding a new watch to my favorites, a Bulova Accurton 2181 watch with a 14K gold-filled case and a tuning fork inside making it all run smoothly.
Very cool, indeed!
