A Symbol of it's Era

Many of us who watched the liftoff of Apollo 11 in 1969 remember the pride and the apprehension that we felt as a tiny capsule, mounted atop a gigantic "flying bomb" was launched into space. TV's were set up in store windows and at workplaces so that people could go about their business without missing the launch and we crowded around those early sets to witness the historic event.

Three.....two.....one.....lift off!   The rocket rose, ever so slowly at first, and the world watched. In every group, a spontaneous chant could be heard. It was almost inaudible at first, breathed rather than spoken, "go".  Several more voices chiming in, "go",  louder now, "go....go", and finally, shouting as the telescopic lens showed the stages separating, GO!.....GO!.....GO!.......

As the rocket rose into the blue Florida sky, America and the world rode with it on an emotional high. At last, when the spacecraft had reached the escape velocity of 17,500 miles per hour and the main engine shut down, the enormity of what had just occurred set in. At he Kennedy Space Center on that July day at 9:32am EDT men from Earth began a journey to the Moon and Accutron was aboard.

America's moon landing program actually started on May 25th, 1961, approximately eight months after Accutron first appeared in stores, when President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech before a joint session of Congress in which he said that America had to be the first nation to land a man on the Moon. That was an amazing period in American history. During the next few years, with the X-15 rocket planes setting new speed and altitude records regularly, and our satellites multiplying in orbit, I wanted a piece of it to call my own. At the end of November in 1963 just a few days after  president Kennedy's assassination, in need of something to lift my spirits, I went to a jewelry shop in Boston and bought a gleaming stainless steel Accutron Chapter Ring Spaceview at the then fairly high price of $150. That watch has been counting time to my life's events ever since.

The Corvette Connection:

During the 60's and 70's, America's Astronauts were young men who regularly flew the fastest and most sophisticated aircraft in existence at that time. They were mostly military test pilots so it should come as no surprise that they loved speed on land as well as in the air. Enter another American icon, the Chevrolet Corvette Although the many documented exploits by astronauts with their "Vette's" were kept under wraps by NASA, and product endorsements were, and still are taboo for astronauts, General Motors, sensing an opportunity for free advertising, leased Corvette's to the astronauts for $1 a year. At the time, these men were only receiving a few grades above standard military pay, so during the years that followed, everywhere that the astronauts went as a group, there were bound to be Accutrons on their wrists, and Corvette's in the parking lot.

Epilogue

For those of you who have an Accutron 214 that belonged to a loved one, I hope that these paragraphs have shed some light on the reasons why many in our generation treasured them and why we kept them in drawers long after Bulova stopped repairing them.

Very truly yours,
Martin Marcus

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FOR ASTRONAUT OWNERS

To the present day, a surprisingly large number of pilots are still wearing an Accutron Astronaut. All of you original Astronaut owners are old enough to remember that during the 60's CBS, NBC, and ABC signed off at midnight which, at that time, was the end of their programming day. One of the stations ran a short film showing a military jet streaking through "towering banks of clouds". The film was accompanied by a narration of the pilots anthem. For those of you 214 owners who are not familiar with this inspiring poem, I present it here. High Flight

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