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Movements of the Cold War: How the Soviets Revolutionized Wristwatches
- arprocter 10y agoVostok Amphibias are interesting due to the clever way they chose to make them waterproof (as the outside pressure increases the domed crystal flattens). They're still making new ones, although the older ones tend to be slimmer. The problem with cheap watches is if anything goes wrong it will probably be uneconomic to get repaired
- lb1lf 10y agoDepends how you look at it. I have spent the value of a 1960's Certina DS many times over servicing and repairing it over the last couple of decades. Totally worth it; it was my grandfather's favourite watch. (Idea being - if you have some sort of emotional attachment to a watch, it doesn't really matter all that much what financial value the rest of the world puts on it.) I would guess collectors of these watches feel much the same way - they are maintaining a bit of history, not a watch. Besides, a lot of them probably do routine CLA (Clean, Lube, Adjust) on their own; it is surprisingly simple given a very modest investment in tools - and guess how good it feels when you've successfully dismantled and reassembled your watch - and it still works...)
- mroatman 10y agoNailed it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- cjlars 10y agoThey also seal the caseback with a screw tightened gasket, a mechanism similar to that used on common mason jars. Almost no other watch does that, instead using simple screw down tops. It was a necessary and clever design at the time (1960s) because Soviets weren't able to import machinery with sufficient tolerances to get good waterproofing using a threaded cap.
- mroatman 10y agoCorrect on all fronts. For those curious, see below for some nice further reading. http://timeway.ru/articles/na_sushe_i_na_more/ http://timeway.ru/articles/na_sushe_i_na_more/ (Google Translate is your friend) http://forums.watchuseek.com/f10/holy-grail-photo-heavy-3209042.html http://forums.watchuseek.com/f10/holy-grail-photo-heavy-3209...
- deftnerd 10y agoBetter link: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-the-soviets-revolutionized-wristwatches/ http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-the-soviets-rev... The current link at Hodinkee is just a summary of the collectorsweekly.com article.
- sctb 10y agoThanks, we updated the link from https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/how-a-bankrupt-rust-belt-watch-company-kick-started-the-soviet-watch-industry-and-the-obsessive-collector-who-chronicles-their-history https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/how-a-bankrupt-rust-belt-w....
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoI'm not totally sure it's valid to use 'Rust Belt' to describe Ohio in 1929.
- mroatman 10y agoRight. It was still iron back then.
- dmreedy 10y agoI just got in to soviet watches myself. If you've not seen them, the Raketa brand from the Petrodvorets Watch Factory in St. Petersburg had some beautiful, non-traditional timepieces that are still classy enough to avoid 'gaudy'. I picked up a Raketa Kopernik for my brother for Christmas, and I'm damn tempted to keep it for myself...
- Florin_Andrei 10y agoI grew up in the Eastern Bloc. The Raketa brand (tr: "Rocket") were quite popular - and had a good reputation too. Nice article, it brought back memories. Like many child geeks back then, I was intrigued by the innards of wristwatches. The rubies used in those tiny bearings were fascinating.
- mroatman 10y agoOf all the Soviet brands, Raketas are the most interesting, aesthetically speaking, in my opinion. To me, it seems like the designers were just having fun. My Raketa collection now numbers 241 pieces(!!), with my favorites being those with stone dials (jade, jasper). These were a nod to the origins of the Petrodvorets Factory. http://mroatman.wixsite.com/watches-of-the-ussr/raketa http://mroatman.wixsite.com/watches-of-the-ussr/raketa
- Florin_Andrei 10y agoI had one of those square designs when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure it was a Raketa. But the color scheme of the face had a deep blue background.
- Animats 10y agoA strange watch-like device that came out of the USSR was the watch-sized circular slide rule. Looks like a small pocket watch, and has two knobs, one for the inner dial and one for the cursor. I have one of these. Pictures: http://www.aetherltd.com/public/misc/props/sliderulefrontmed.jpg http://www.aetherltd.com/public/misc/props/sliderulefrontmed... http://www.aetherltd.com/public/misc/props/sliderulebackmed.jpg http://www.aetherltd.com/public/misc/props/sliderulebackmed.... These date from the era when the US was making pocket calculators, an area in which the USSR lagged.
- jacobolus 10y agoHow easy is it to actually turn those dials? I would expect a regular (linear or circular) slide rule to be much faster to work.
- mroatman 10y agoVery, very easy. Though I wouldn't argue that a linear slide rule isn't easier to work with.
- mroatman 10y agoVery cool! Here is mine with the original box and receipt/instructions: http://mroatman.wixsite.com/watches-of-the-ussr/slide-rule?lightbox=dataItem-iqswqkn4 http://mroatman.wixsite.com/watches-of-the-ussr/slide-rule?l...
- TheMagicHorsey 10y agoThere are watches that incorporate this mechanism. See the following: https://www.amazon.com/Seiko-SND255P1-Flightmaster-Pilot-Chronograph/dp/B000M02XZ8 https://www.amazon.com/Seiko-SND255P1-Flightmaster-Pilot-Chr...
- barryp 10y agoI was curious about the workers from Ohio who went to the USSR to help setup the transferred equipment (did they make it back? end up in a gulag?), found this short article: https://dueber-hampden.blogspot.com/2012/12/to-russia-with-love.html https://dueber-hampden.blogspot.com/2012/12/to-russia-with-l... Sounds like they were treated like kings and came home after their contract was up
- kapitza 10y agoHa, not in all cases: http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/772/1/the-forgotten-american-emigrants-to-the-ussr http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/772/1/the...
- trhway 10y agoreminded about another, and extremely significant, jump start of USSR tech by a US business around the same time - the car factory GAZ set up by Ford : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAZ#1929_to_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAZ#1929_to_2000
- kapitza 10y agoNot even slightly isolated examples: https://archive.org/details/Sutton--Western-Technology-1917-1930 https://archive.org/details/Sutton--Western-Technology-1917-... Neither Americans nor Russians wanted to say much about this, especially after 1945. So, memory hole.
- nine_k 10y agoIn 1930s, USSR was buying American and European technology like crazy, especially the heavy industry technology. USSR was able to pay gold for that; gold still was the monetary metal at the time. The gold was earned by selling wheat and other agricultural supplies. The wheat was also produced like crazy, but, being a dictatorship, Soviet authorities just took however much they could from the collective farms (private farming was mostly eliminated). This likely contributed to a famine in 1932-33 in Ukraine, then a part of the USSR [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
- int_19h 10y agoIt's worth remembering that, while the famine had its peak in Ukraine, and claimed by far the most lives there, it didn't end at the border between Soviet republics - adjacent regions of RSFSR and Kazakhstan were also affected. The term "Holodomor" usually specifically refers to the events in Ukraine, while the famine as a whole is just the "Soviet famine of 1932-33": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%9333 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93...
- flukus 10y agoYou also have to wonder how WW2 would have turned out had the USSR not been in such a rush to industrialize (not that they knew at the time)? Then again, they may have had more people to fight the Nazi's.
- guard-of-terra 10y agoWell, people smuggled those watches to Poland after the collapse of USSR to get economy going. Post-soviet state could not arrange proper exports, imagine that.
- trhway 10y ago>Post-soviet state could not arrange proper exports, imagine that. it was the time of "privatization" and the exports were "privatized" too. For example Putin got his start in the Russian "business" (after running scared away from his KGB job after the failed coup of 1991) as one of the key persons - he was issuing export licenses, ie. representing that "Post-soviet state" - in the massive export channel of the "privatized" commodities (mostly metals, some oil, etc) through St.Petersburg(Leningrad). A typical, and relatively small, example of such "privatized" export back then : https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/04/19/putin-and-a-controversial-past/ https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/04/19/putin-and-a...
- guard-of-terra 10y agoThere was perhaps a long list of people who could have save the day, and nobody did. As far as I am concerned, the whole society has failed. Blaming it on a handful people is pointless IMO.
- mroatman 10y agoA bit OT, but Poland used Soviet movements before the collapse as well: http://forums.watchuseek.com/f10/1mwf-alfa-poland-3474649.html http://forums.watchuseek.com/f10/1mwf-alfa-poland-3474649.ht...
- nraynaud 10y agoIf I were to have a watch one day, I would want a Lip watch ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIP_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIP_(company) ), and I want one of the watches that was hidden in the caves.