Explore Bulova

Bulova’s catalog has room for both a restrained rectangular dress watch and a chronograph built around a lunar mission. That breadth goes back to a New York business founded by Joseph Bulova in 1875. The brand became a familiar American name through advertising, but its more interesting story is how often it challenged what belonged inside a watch case.

The Accutron, introduced in 1960, replaced the conventional balance with an electronically driven tuning fork vibrating at 360 Hz. Its hum remains unmistakable. The Spaceview made the mechanism itself the dial-side attraction, exposing coils and circuitry beneath the hands. Decades later, Precisionist quartz movements brought another distinctive signature: a seconds hand that sweeps rather than ticks once per second.

Today, the Lunar Pilot revisits the Bulova chronograph worn on the Moon during Apollo 15 in 1971. The Oceanographer takes a different route into the archives, drawing on the cushion-shaped divers whose 666-foot depth rating earned them the “Devil Diver” nickname. Both give the brand’s experimental streak a recognizable shape.