Over the last few days, I’ve been updating in tandem each of the worn “Brands” pages on James Bond Watches. For most of them, this meant doing a deep dive on histories; wherever practical, I looked to the watchmakers themselves for foundations.
Little if any of this touched upon “James Bond” per se. And yet, at the same time, I would not have been looking at any of that content had there not been an association with the original Ian Fleming stories or EON Productions motion pictures. By extension, neither would a good many of you who visits this website — at least not as a primary draw.
That’s when it struck me: Those pages are not tangential. Rather, they are raison d’être.
Not long after the National Watch & Clock Museum premiered its first-ever dedicated “Wristwatch Gallery” just before the Christmas holiday in 2013, museum director Noel Poirier and I had an extended conversation there in that space, right off the main aisle of the tour floor [1]. The Museum had committed to unveiling it within that window as a never-before-had section entirely dedicated to wrist-worn time pieces. But snags had been encountered with important graphics deliveries and installations.
The original concept provided for two large cases that would feature content on a basis that would change every year or two (“refreshing” on differently-phased cycles). I had agreed to assemble one of them as a “mini-chronology” centered on two original literary watches — one, the Rolex designated by Ian Fleming in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1963, the other, a Breitling for Bentley personally worn by Jeffery Deaver as part of a disguise for his Agent 007 in the 2011 continuation novel, Carte Blanche.
Since we did hit the mark with that setup, completed on December 19, Director Poirier made that the focus of the Wristwatch Gallery, thus opening “on time,” so to speak.
By all accounts, those who came for the opening weeks were thrilled. In the following months, those who returned, in addition to increasing numbers of newcomers, were further delighted with additional content as it was unveiled: A bit on wristlets worn during World War I [2], a dealer display promoting early Bulova Accutrons [3,4], attractive images and texts that described a period when Elvis Presley made Hamilton Ventura [5] his personal choice, and so forth.
My working relationship with Noel Poirier has always been such that I’ve never thought in terms of who “came up with an idea,” nor which of us took first steps to make it manifest. What I do know is that, in the wake of Wristwatch, we had noticed how the fictional character of “James Bond” had provided some kind of magical construct that drew impressive numbers, beginning with those who experienced our “Bond Watches, James Bond Watches” exhibition during its 2010-2011 run.
Now we saw that that lightening had again struck.
And with that, came our conversation about quartz watches [6]. In 2012, 97.3% of all people who wore wristwatches were wearing quartz wristwatches. The Museum had displayed watches with quartz drives for as long as anyone could remember. But, as with the Wristwatch Gallery, it had never carved out a place where that pivotal period of inception, acceptance, and preference was set out and explained.
As I wrote last Thursday, “Bond Watches” included the first-ever display of all screen-worn Seiko James Bond watch models [7]. In the same gallery we had a correct Hamilton Pulsar prior that every knew had come prior, and had introduced the world to James Bond watches by TAG Heuer [8] post-Seiko. Through a half-dozen-plus movies, “James Bond” had worn the first practical commercial quartz, then progressed breakthrough after breakthrough, right on to mainstream go-anywhere, do-anything wrist-wear. Brand agnostic choices included models from American, Japanese, and Swiss makes.
The EON Productions movies had (unconsciously) already provided a continuity thread for the quartz-selections story. What remained over the course of the next eighteen months, then, was to interweave that sequence with the history of challenges faced and overcome, and myriad needs served by quartz-tech.
Better still, as the largest repository of horological artifacts in North America, placement of such an expansive exhibit within the National Watch & Clock Museum would provide countless educational opportunities. In some areas, an anticipated setup could “pay off” on futures anticipated by some displays encountered by visitors earlier in their tour; in others, it would set the stage for appreciating the need of innovations yet to come [9].
Today, almost a decade after the opening of James Bond Wore the Quartz Revolution and the proof-of-concept that has come of that, I believe that the largest question that has been posed by this site can be answered [10].
Why the rubric of ‘James Bond watches’ is more important than many might think
Or, as I’ve titled this Processing post: Why are James Bond watches important?
James Bond watches are important because they provide a framework for and compulsion to better understand the needs, fashions, and technologies behind personal, readily accessible timekeeping devices. Nicely, those devices “return the favor” by frequently shedding light on the motivations, character development, and the environments (over time) in which the fictional James Bond character continues, apparently, to uniquely thrive.
What I saw in working so closely with each of the key brands here — and which I expect to see further revealed through similar excursions into specific plot lines, as well as, yes, carefully curated tours of world history — is that the importance of James Bond watches will never be found in any one “list.”
Rather, it will come through their timeline.
I expect that will be quite a ways off from even nascent appearance among these pages any time soon. But I figured you all would enjoy reading here, in real-time, that it will be coming. And that it is already in place as a strategic structure for all else en route.
OFF-SITE REFERENCES
- National Watch & Clock Museum (accessed January 6, 2024).
- “Wristlets: Early Wristwatches and Coming of an Age in World War I” (2000) Michael Friedberg, TimeZone (accessed January 16, 2024).
- “The History of Accutron: Accutron History from Bulova Publications” (1960, 1964) Old Father Time (accessed January 16, 2024).
- “The History Of The Bulova Accutron Watch” (May 1, 2018) Times Ticking (via YouTube, accessed January 16, 2024).
- “(Best) Picture Perfect: The Famous Elvis Watch Is Back in Stock in Time for Awards Season” (February 21, 2023) Oscar Hartzog, Rolling Stone (accessed January 16, 2024).
- “Horological Industry” (2012) Japan Clock & Watch Association (accessed January 13, 2015).
- “James Bond watch exhibit makes history with Seiko UK” (August 20, 2024) Dell Deaton, James Bond Watches Blog (via Internet Archive, accessed January 2, 2024).
- “Announcing the James Bond TAG Heuer wristwatch” (April 3, 2010) Dell Deaton, James Bond Watches Blog (via Internet Archive, accessed January 16, 2024).
- “Smartwatches – the next disruptive innovation?” (2013) Jules Boudrand, Howard da Silva, Jean-François Lagassé, and Karine Szegedi, and Dennis Brandes and Michael Grampp, The Deloitte Swiss Watch Industry Study 2013: Time for the future, page 13 (accessed January 16, 2024).
- “About” (December 30, 2023) Dell Deaton, James Bond Watches (via Internet Archive, accessed January 14, 2024).
