Vulcain Cricket

Vulcain manages to fly mostly under than radar in the U.S., yet watches from the Swiss brand have been worn by everyone from American Presidents to Italian Alpinists. If you’ve never heard of the Cricket, class is now in session.

The first thing you need to know is that the Cricket was the world’s first wristwatch with a mechanical alarm. Vulcain introduced the Cricket to the world in 1947 at the famous Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City, and it was a media sensation (in so much as much as any wristwatch can be).

The second thing that you need to know is that the Cricket is the watch with the strongest ties to the White House. It was photographed on the wrists of Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon, and every president since then (with the exception of Bush “43”) has been gifted a Cricket. That’s a pretty cool history for a watch.

We're big fans of alarm watches, especially the Jaegar LeCoultre Memovox, but the Cricket was the first to make a working model, and as we all know vintage collectors love to own the first of anything. It also happens that when Vulcain designed this innovative watch, they nailed it on the first go-around. The Cricket wasn’t some delicate novelty; in fact, the watch accompanied the first expedition to reach the peak of K2, 28,250ft up in the Himalayas. Future advertisements would read “The teams of all these expeditions have expressed their satisfaction and admiration of the record performance of their Vulcain Cricket, testifying that their running was as faultless and the ringing of the alarm as distinct on the summit of K2 as in the damp jungle of Equatorial Africa.”

Pretty damned cool if you ask us.

This example of the Cricket is cased in solid gold, and features a gorgeous dial with a full set of Arabic numerals, red seconds hand, and blue outer alarm track. For a watch half a century old, this Cricket looks remarkably modern. For any vintage watch nerd, the Cricket needs to have a slot in the watch box.