bulova industry watch and clockmaking predecessor e. robert & co founded ny u.s. 1885 1885 founder albert wittnauer headquarters new rochelle new york united states area served worldwide key people martha wittnauer first woman ceo products wittnauer wittnauer allproof watches clocks website wittnauer.com 1 wittnauer was a watch and timepiece company founded in 1885 by swiss immigrant albert wittnauer that is now a brand of the bulova company . history edit albert wittnauer was a swiss immigrant who arrived in new york city in 1872 at the age of 16 . he began working for his brother in law eugene robert . a sales outlet had already been established in new york in 1858 by m. p s broz who was succeeded by audemars & schaffuss then by f. eug ne robert & co. robert was an importer of fine swiss watches . with the help of his younger brother albert wittnauer decided there was a need for a watch designed with all of the durability and function the american public demanded but with local production to help keep costs down . 2 the first wittnauer s watch line were crafted starting from 1880 but wittnauer brand was formally established in 1885 when mr. robert gave the title to albert wittnauer under the name the a. wittnauer company . 2 wittnauer movements were at the beginning generally made for them by swiss firms revue thommen and others while in later years wittnauer used a number of different sources for their movements . the company began as a small family business catering to the ever growing world of both scientific and private exploration which gained them a reputation for use by those who needed reliability navigators explorers and astronomers . 2 the a. wittnauer co. became further involved with the navy for early tests in the budding fields of aviation and navigation . of the wittnauer company and products horologist marvin e. whitney wrote no one company has been more involved in the design and production of so many different types of navigational timepieces and been involved in so many history making expeditions ... . 3 in following years wittnauer co. steadily grew and moved to new york center . during the 20th century it also bought a production plant in puerto rico . 1 when the last wittnauer brother died in 1916 martha wittnauer became the first woman watchmaker ceo . 4 during the first world war wittnauer produced instruments and watches for the early aviation units . 2 the most famous model was probably the wittnauer allproof produced for the first time in 1918 and one of the first all proof models ever used by daredevill jimmie mattern in his attempt to fly around the world and by neil armstrong during the gemini 8 mission . 5 6 7 in 1926 the nbc selected wittnauer company to provide the official timing for its radio broadcasting . 2 in 1926 amelia earhart made the first solo flight across the atlantic with her lockheed vega 5b equipped with wittnauer instruments . 2 wittnauer products were widely used in scientific expeditions and exploration 2 and was with longines movements one of three contenders for the first mission on the moon along with omega speedmaster and rolex daytona . in 1950 the swiss company longines bought wittnauer 8 and marketed some very similar lines of watches under both brand names maintaining separate factories . in 1995 swatch broke the 125 year collaboration between longines and wittnauer and took over the longines distribution . 1 the wittnauer company retained its reputation for most of the 20th century . after some budget problems it was eventually bought by bulova for 11.6 million dollars in september 2001 . 1 bulova has now launched a new nightlife range of fashion watches under the wittnauer brand . references edit a b c d william george shuster wittnauer bought by bulova ; sector group sold restructured jck 2001 a b c d e f g the history of wittnauer reyne haines vintage wristwatches krause publications 2010 isbn 978 1 4402 0409 8 page 237 america s first woman watchmaker ceo norma buchanan the watch buff s book of trivia watch buff books 2005 isbn 978 097725120 9 neil armstrong picture of the landed gemini 8 module right wrist armstrong picture of the landed gemini 8 module left wrist life magazine 8 april 1966 page 87 neil wore the watch that a wonderful guy called jimmy mattern ... had worn when he attempted the first solo around the world flight in 1933 . jimmy s plane had a frozen oil line and cracked up in siberia so we decided to make sure the watch went all the way round the world this time ... it was almost 11 hours since liftoff and jimmy mattern s old wristwatch was still keeping good time mikrolisk database external links edit william george shuster wittnauer bought by bulova ; sector group sold restructured jck 2001 retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title wittnauer & oldid 741590083 categories defunct watchmaking companiesdefunct companies based in new york cityhidden categories use dmy dates from february 2015 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages italiano edit links this page was last modified on 28 september 2016 at 13 06 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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