There Are Pandas, and Then There Are Pandas.
And this isn't either of them! The Pandas we're talking about here, are watches, not bears. And what got me thinking about them (again) was a link posted this morning by @cm.rook who pointed a few of us to the very attractive (and not terribly priced) Yema "Rallygraph" Panda which, in it's most traditional arrangement, looks like the one on the left, but can also be had in the version on the right: The model on the left is a true Panda, while the model on the right is called a reverse Panda. The reason for that distinction is clear--Panda bears, only come in the first arrangement. Now at this point, everyone should be thinking about the most well-know Panda, The Rolex Panda, which is actually a Daytona, and among Rolex Daytonas, the most famous of which is the Paul Newman Daytona, which was famous first, because it was Paul's, and second because it sold at auction for $17.8 million (US Dollars). The story of that auction is well-known so I'll only...
Nov 8, 2019
The Bulova Accutron was in the 60s the most popular $100+ timepiece in America, President Johnson declares it the White House’s official Gift of State. Accutron is the first watch to keep time through electronics, it was a revolutionary timekeeping concept of a watch without springs or escapement operated by an electronically activated tuning fork. The movement was so accurate that the US Government asked Bulova to delay the release of the revolutionary movement for fear the technology may fall into the hands of the Russians, at the time US would be launching new satellites timed by the Accutron and they simply did not want the Russians to benefit from the same precision. In 1960 NASA incorporate the Accutron into its computers for the space program which become an integral part of 46 missions of the U.S. Space Program.
In 1965, Bulova released the 218, a slimmer movement than the 214 (4.4mm vs 5.5mm), with a more traditional side-exiting setting stem. The 218 was released in a range of complications not seen in the 214, including calendar functions and a jump-hour secondary timezone variant. While the 218 was a reliable, widely adopted caliber, it was never offered in a true Spaceview variant, and never achieved the enduring popularity of the 214.
Bulova is the most successful American watch manufacturer. Established in 1875 in New York by an immigrant named Joseph Bulova, it was acquired by the Loews Corporation in 1979 and then again by Citizen in 2008, but continues to operate independently from the same New York location.