In 1915 Martha Wittnauer became Chairman of the Wittnauer Watch Corporation, making her one of the first senior female corporate executives in this country. She rose to the position, which she conducted with great skill, after her brothers, who had various leadership positions in the company, each died early. By all accounts she was a skilled strategic leader, and directed the company to occupy a kind of niche: the Wittnauer watch would be fundamentally a navigational watch, used in explorations and great quests, thus establishing the brand as highly accurate and resilient.
In her Lockheed Vega-5B, Amelia Earhart used Wittnauer timepieces, and reclusive but wealthy Howard Hughes, flying his H-1 racer, “Winged Bullet,” made the record-setting flight from Burbank, CA to Newark, NJ with Wittnauer instruments aboard.
The Wittnauer All-Proof (the first ever water-shock-proof, anti-magnetic watch) was prominently used in World War II. As a show of its durability it was once dropped from the Empire State Building.
A Swiss watch company, headquartered in New York, Wittnauer was truly a family affair, at least up through the Great Depression. In 1872, only 7 years removed from the Civil War, Albert Wittnauer locates to New York from Switzerland and is invited into the watch-making business by his brother-in-law, J. Eugene Robert. Two years later, second brother Louis decamps from Switzerland to join his brother Albert in J. Eugene’s business.
In 1885, Albert takes over the company from his brother-in-law. Three years later the last of the Wittnauer brothers, 23-year old Emile, arrives in New York to work for the watch company. It is when Emile dies, in 1915, that Martha retains control of the company.
The company operated successfully-NBC used Wittnauer in the late 1920s as the official timing device for radio broadcasts-until the Depression. Like numerous other businesses, the watch maker struggled in the 1930s and eventually, of necessity, Martha sold the company to a national jewelry manufacturer. Through a series of mergers and purchases, Wittnauer today is Bulova-owned.
Over the course of Wittnauer’s history, the eponymous watch has taken its lumps in the marketplace, and has not always been on the cutting edge of innovation. But, then, neither has it been inert.
In the 1940s, particularly, Wittnauer flourishes. It is widely used by the military, so much so that part of its identity is as a military timepiece. This was no accident, and the advertising and good will it received from its military association helped it immensely. In 1948 CBS airs 30-minute radio programs featuring the Wittnauer Choraliers.
Today Wittnauer occupies, generally, a price range of $500.00 to $1,200.00. As a result it can be thought of as veering toward “high end,” while remaining well within financial reason for many serious and casual collectors. While it may be argued that Wittnauer has not made significant stylistic advancements in the last 20 odd years, there can be no doubt that various models of the watch are aesthetically pleasing and of course retain the durability and reliability resident in the watch since its inception.
Key models include the Warwick, Barrymore, and the Montserrat.
