Simply Beautiful!

Vulcain’s origin goes back as far as 1858 but is best known for the Vulcain Cricket introduced in 1947. The Cricket was the world’s first fully functional alarm wristwatch, quickly establishing the brand’s reputation as the “Presidents’ Watch” after being worn prominently by several U.S. Presidents including Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon.

This unlabeled “skeleton” has nothing to do with the Cricket except that it is also manufactured by Vulcain.

The quality of the movement is superb and is reflected in the brilliant finish applied to the every aspect: the plates, wheels and highly polished screw heads. The case is also quality 20 micron gold plate.

It’s hard to date a watch like this but the square blocky hands, the equaly blocky index markers and the bulky case leaves me in no doubt that this was produced in the early 70s.

The movement is the rare, 22 jewel, automatic wind MSR T54. The MSR movements came into being in 1961 when a consortium of small manufacturers: Revue, Phenix, Berser and Vulcain collaborated to produce their own in house movements. The MSR T54 is quite low in profile at 5.1 mm thick. It features a ball bearing rotor, incabloc shock protection, fine screw adjusted regulator and a strange train and hand gear driven separately by the barrel. It is well engineered and very good quality. Of utmost importance, it is downright beautiful……and it needs to be if you are going to show the movement off, front and back!