1950s Military Defense and the Watch Industry.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Now instead of watches, we’re talking about AI and EVs. Technology will always outpace our understanding and command of it.

It's the bit about self charging that got me .just checked and solar panels came out in 1954 in the USA.A very forward thinking representative

Those hearings are fascinating. I believe the wider context to this was trade policy and a desire to protect the US watch industry from foreign competition. National security can be invoked as an excuse to justify protectionism and erecting trade barriers. E.g. See the debate about 2018 US tariffs on steel and aluminium justified on national security grounds.

General Omar Bradley was very active in this area as he was chairman of Bulova and had some credibility on military matters, though that was somewhat undermined by his former superior Eisenhower's speech on the ills of the military industrial complex.

There was also the background question of fairness - was it fair that the Swiss watch industry which had richly profited from supplying both sides in the war with military and civilian timepieces should put the US watch industry out of business which had done its patriotic duty and devoted itself almost completely to military production.

"No sir, the Japanese will corner that market in 50 years."

"Ah...ok. Thanks."

This conversation turned out to be more prophetic than it seems.

Hamilton had a number of military contracts following WW2. They built on their military work until it was their primary business by the late 1960’s. Their watchmaking business became an insignificant fraction of their revenue.

Pulsar was a side project that resulted from their research into digital bomb fuse timers.

So it happened that in 1970, they had a terrible fiscal year and decided to to sell off the watchmaking division of the company. Hamilton Watch Company renamed itself HMW and created a new company called Hamilton Watch Company Inc. which SSIH gained a 17% share, later 51%. SSIH later became Swatch but that’s another story.

HMW continued with its military contracts and other operations until 1983 when it was acquired by Clabir. The Hamilton Technology division of HMW produced timing fuses and other military devices while Clabir also owned General Defence, a manufacturer of armour piercing shells.

There is little mention of Hamilton Technology following this sale and I presume that it was more or less swallowed up within General Defence.

The Hamilton Watch Company, the original company renamed HMW, was entirely a military contractor before it disappeared from public view.

Yes! I thought that was so fascinating. Success in war being used as a means to justify pretty much anything is a common theme in U.S. history. And that there was SO much participation in this particular hearing was interesting to me.

Thanks for a great historical snapshot of Hamilton, gang! 🤙❤️

There's also an interesting parallel to attitudes in the UK to the US in the decades after the war - there was an influential strand in politics that felt that the country had effectively bankrupted itself and lost its position as a world power in defeating fascism while the US although a key ally had benefitted enormously economically from it.

Interesting.

Thank you for sharing.

Nice, I like this... definitely interesting. Elvis wore one in the movie Blue Hawaii.

The Hamilton Electric Watch was the first electric watch, the predecessor by almost a decade to the tuning fork and quartz watches.

Being a collector of Hamilton Electrics, there is the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good...if you love Mid-Century design like I do, then these watches have amazing designs from Richard Arbib who designed Chrysler's incredible cars in the 1950s.

The bad...almost nobody can service these watches...so a simple battery change is $25 plus the roundtrip shipping costs to send it to an expert watchmaker...and God forbid you need a service (which you invariably do since the contacts wear out often), then it is $300 a pop.

The ugly...if you don't get the batteries changed routinely...then you risk the batteries leaking inside the watch and destroying the movement and the watch.

So, be prepared to be held hostage once you dive in here.

Here are some of the inimitable Hamilton Electric designs (and no Patek was not first with asymmetric designs...Gilbert Albert took his design cues from Hamilton and created homages for Patek)...

And Meg, a young woman like yourself would find these designs quite suitable...

Even if Hamilton hadn't spun off their watch arm in 1970, I have a feeling they would probably have shuttered it by the early 1980s as Seiko and company were obliterating watch brands left and right.

I'm actually shocked Bulova managed to survive until the 21sr century

#3 please 🙏🥺 There Hamilton electric movements were semi rushed to market as they feared Lip beating them. So the initial model was VERY fussy and rather delicate. They got some bugs worked out by 1959 and all of them by 1961 but by then the Bulova Accutron movement had arrived and it was better. The wat the Hamilton electric watches worked is really neat as it's basically an electric motor in place of a mainspring powering a mechanical movement. Plenty of brands including Timex and citizen cloned the movement mechanism until 1969 when Seiko made all non-quartz electric watches obsolete.

I think this is exactly right. By 1970, Hamilton had closed it’s American production and all production was made at Buren’s manufacturing plant. They had no way to build a watch themselves. The sale basically consisted of the name and trademarks.

After the sale, Hamilton began using Omega quartz modules to survive the crisis.