Locate the date code. Genuine Bulova watches manufactured between 1924 and 2009 should all have an imprinted date code marked somewhere on the watch. Once you locate and identify the date code, you should know the year during which that watch was manufactured. [2] X Research source Note that these codes only specify the manufacture date of the watch. It is possible that the watch did not go into circulation until a later date, but there is no way of identifying the exact year a specific watch went on the market.

Day-Date On Accutron 218 | UK Watch Forum Setting Day-Date On Accutron 218 | UK Watch Forum

Bulova watches made between 1924 and 1949 are marked with a date code symbol. These symbols are typically located on the inside movement of the watch, so you or a professional jeweler will need to open the watch to locate the code.This design of Cal. 224 allowed Bulova to mass-produce the Accuquartz movement at low cost using many shared parts and machinery. Although announced two years after the first quartz watches, the Accuquartz was the first quartz watch for sale in the United States and was a smash hit. By 1975, Bulova boasted more than 35 Accuquartz models. The company soon abandoned the name and the tuning fork, however, switching to stepper motors for their future “Accutron Quartz” branded watches.

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Cal. 224, used in the slim full-production Accuquartz, was closely related to the contemporary Accutron Cal. 218 tuning fork movement. It can be thought of as a tuning fork movement regulated by a 32 KHz quartz crystal or as a quartz movement that uses a conventional tuning fork and wheel train rather than a stepper motor. The Beta 21 movement, developed by the CEH consortium, used a similar mechanism to drive the hands, though with an electro-magnetic reed rather than a tuning fork.

By November 1974, Bulova had introduced a digital version of the Accuquartz. Equipped with an LED display, Cal. 228 used a 768,432 Hz quartz crystal to keep time. A complex CMOS integrated circuit with over 1,500 transistors was used to divide this high frequency crystal and drive the light-emitting diodes. It used a four-segment display with a “dot” to indicate AM. A button at 3:00 illuminated the dial, while another at 8:00 was used to set the time.