Vintage Plastic Explosives - Early Polymer Watchmaking

Delrin, Polyamide, Polyacette, Hostaform, Polystyrol, Lucite, Acrylic, Perspex and Bakelite were all part of a new medium of 1960's & 70's plastic watchmaking (the first all plastic watch-->link). With flexible materials came flexible designs and like animated characters in a cartoon, the creators were able to push limits of the physical world.

Some vintage polymer highlights...

70's Buler Volcano

1971 Pierre Cardin

Tekron Cube

70's Mount Royal Curvex

1960's Bullseye

60's Lucerne Cuffbuster

And just to point out, these are all mechanical (manual wind-up and automatic) watches. The Swatch revolution was still 10-15 years away.

1971 Tissot Astrolon - First Complete Plastic Watch

Tissot Astrolon Cal. 2250 Plastic Watch & Movement

1971 Tissot 'Astrolon - Synthetic Idea 2001' Wristwatch, the first complete plastic watch. Intended to reduce components needed to assemble a mechanical watch. Successfully cutting the parts from 91 to 52, shortening the assembly by 40 time-consuming operations, the Astrolon or "Sytal", (an acronym for "Systeme Total d'Autolubrification") paved the way for a little start-up known as Swatch. Tissot researched plastic mechanical watchmaking for nearly 20 years before introducing this innovator and ultimate failure.