Spaceman 70's Swiss Patented RARE Futuristic Hand Winding Men's Watch +Free Band

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Seller: apostolos72 ✉️ (1,319) 100%, Location: Athens, Attiki, GR, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 266386670609 Spaceman 70's Swiss Patented RARE Futuristic Hand Winding Men's Watch +Free Band.

This is one of the most special designed watches you can ever find. 

Very innovative design for its era!

Offered in Near Very Good condition and keeps good time!

The Spaceman Watches of 1972-77

All obsessions have their own big bangs and appropriately enough, my own compulsive watch collecting began with the Spaceman watches of the '70s. Below is an article I wrote for QP Magazine reminiscing about going back to the future with these Spacemen.

Leaving New York one chilly winter day, late in 1999, I found myself come unstuck in time and arrive in Basel at the dawn of 1972. My time travel led me to a world filled with hundreds of Spacemen, sitting undisturbed in a Basel watch factory with no plans of visiting the moon anytime soon. This grounded crew was actually a secret stash of vintage Spaceman watches I unearthed at a former distributor of the timepieces designed by Andre LeMarquand, an architect from Neuchâtel.

The futuristic watches had fallen out of style during the '80s and '90s but I was ready to fly them out of their dark Swiss graveyard and back onto the wrists of space-age sentimentalists like myself.

In the late sixties Claude Lebet, owner of the Bulle based watch brand Catena asked Le Marquand to create a timepiece inspired by man's conquest of the moon and the astronauts who made it there. Mr. Le Marquand provided him with his first wristwatch design called, what else, the "Spaceman."

The Spaceman was unlike anything seen before and Catena introduced the fleet at the Basel Fair of 1972. The large oval case appeared to be docked on your wrist held by a triple-forked Corfam strap by DuPont. The case also had a coned dome crystal half concealed by a colored metal visor that allowed viewing of the dial to only the wearer. All hands and markers were perfectly seventies orange with models in a variety of colors only possible during that special decade.

The watches were powered by automatic and manual winding mechanical ETA movements and were distributed by a variety brands, among them Jules Jurgensen, Fortis, Tressa and Zeno.

Meet The Spaceman: A Popular Fashion Watch Of the 1960s And 1970s That Was Almost Forgotten In A Drawer

My headline above reads almost like a newspaper headline. And so it should; it’s big news because the Spaceman, a famous pre-quartz-era fashion watch, was a big deal at the beginning of the 1970s. A full decade before Swatch was founded, this automatic watch in non-precious metal became highly fashionable, today easily marking the time period in which it was created.

The Spaceman started with Felix W. Huber. Longtime followers of horology likely know Huber as the modern owner of  Zeno Watches , known for affordable pilot-style watches.

Huber has been around this industry for a long time – since 1964, as a matter of fact – and early on he already had a good eye for what he could sell. A designer himself, he knew good design when he saw it. One day, Huber was visiting a business acquaintance who was rummaging around a drawer looking for some papers. Huber did not tell me the name of this acquaintance when I visited him many years ago, but after reading a new book –  Retro Watches by Mitch Greenblatt and Josh Sims  – it might well have been Claude Lebet of Catena.

Huber spied a watch in the drawer and immediately asked what it was. The man replied that it wasn’t anything good and tried to put it back into the drawer. But Huber wouldn’t hear of it. He took another look at it, didn’t think of the risk for one second, and immediately said, “I’ll make 5,000 of that.”

Though the man was doubtful, he gave Huber the watch, and the rest, as they say, is history.

André Le Marquand and The Spaceman

This watch was the Spaceman. And its designer wasn’t Huber, but none other than  André Le Marquand .

Twenty years ago, Le Marquand was a well-known name in the watch industry, but pre-Mechanical Renaissance Monsieur Le Marquand was not yet famous. It was the Spaceman that brought him renown as a watch designer.

Le Marquand was born of a British father and a Swiss mother in 1930. He was educated in art in England and Switzerland, later becoming an Anglo-Swiss architect and designer. After spending time abroad as a young man, he is now permanently anchored in Switzerland.

Le Marquand’s love affair with designing watches began when the  Catena watch brand  built a new factory at the same time that Huber had the distribution rights for Catena. Catena’s owner, Lebet, and its director, Francis Bourquin, asked Le Marquand to create a fresco in the fresh mortar of the building. And then he took on a new design challenge when he was asked by the Catena team to design a watch.

Le Marquand designed the Spaceman as a tribute to the conquest of space in 1969 (perhaps not so coincidentally the same year David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” came out), obviously quite inspired by these celestial events that so ruled the day in that era.

He went on to design other famous watches, eventually founding his own Swiss watch company, Orama SA, in 1978, becoming most well known for Side Watch.

 

Europa Star  reports Le Marquand retiring in 2005  and the company coming under new ownership of Cédric Le Marquand.

What is the Spaceman?

The Spaceman has been on display at New York’s Museum of Modern Art as well as the renowned  MIH watch and clock museum of La Chaux-de-Fonds .

What makes this watch so special is the mix of different elements that had until then not been seen together. Quartz watches had not yet taken over, and today it seems almost indecent to put an automatic movement into a fiberglass and chrome case. However, Le Marquand dared to dream and Huber had the wherewithal to make it into reality.

The Spaceman’s blend of ovals, curves, and straight lines was just right, touching a nerve in a hip watch-buying public. It was a polarizing watch: people generally either hated it or loved it at first sight.

Its Hesalite crystal, semi-conical and domed, is partially covered by a piece of colored metal, matching the hue of the dial and serving two functions.

First, it covers a part of the dial, leaving only the vital displays visible. Second, combined with the crystal itself, it quickly and easily reminds one of an astronaut’s helmet. This is surrounded by an oval piece of shiny chrome-plated brass, forming a type of bezel and framing the watch.

The entire watch is housed in a pod-like case of white fiberglass, a revolutionary material in 1969, and can be seen from the sides as it stands up on the wrist, leaving the impression that the entire timepiece is the shape of a flying saucer.

The case measures 50 x 42 mm and is 18 mm in height, but despite that it is a comfortable fit – even on my very small wrist.

The strap is a triple-split Corfam band (a trademarked, synthetic, microporous material by DuPont used as a leather substitute) stamped with the word “Spaceman” on the underside. Its color matches that of the dial and the helmet piece.

The dial shows the time with bright-orange hands, and some models (like the one shown here) displayed the day and the date. Depending on the edition, these displays are powered by an AS 2063, 2066, 1913, 1916, or 5206, or, less frequently, an FHF 96 or 96/4.

AS (Alfred Schild) and FHF (Fabrique d’Horlogerie de Fontainemelon) were taken over by Ebauches SA in 1978, which later became ETA. Neither AS nor FHF movements are in production any longer.

The original oval Spaceman, which was available in six different colors, was followed by the audacious Spaceman Audacieuse in 1974 and the Spaceman Carré in 1977, both of which were also designed by Le Marquand.

The Audacieuse is rectangular and features a chromium-plated steel bracelet or a leather strap, which may have been lacquered. The third series was introduced in 1977 and had a digital mechanical movement. A fourth series, appearing in the same year, comprised two LCD timepieces. The popularity of these sequels, however, never reached that of the original oval timepiece.

The 40,000 original oval Spacemen were sold in Switzerland as of 1969 by Huber for 196 Swiss francs (according to today’s exchange rate, between $150 and $200). Many, many, many editions followed, specially manufactured for distributors in various countries such as Australia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Italy, the U.S.A., and the United Arab Emirates.

Peter Doensen, author of the book  Watch , wrote that a total of 150,000 Spacemen were sold by 1982. Between 1985 and 1995, Huber sold about 15,000 more pieces to new-old stock dealers.

About this Swiss Spaceman for sale

A very stylish design for its era (1970) with fiberglass patented case and flying saucer shape. The watch is offered with a free black rubber band. Dial and crystal are in very good condition. The frond side case has physical and not annoying wearings without something important to be mentioned. See carefully the pictures before purchase.  This watch is a very rare item for your collection no matter if you are a collector or not! The watch keeps good time and date functions works Ok both manually and automatically!

SPECS

-Stainless Steel & Fiberglass Case 

-Measurements: 46mm without the crown (X) 41mm lug to lug and 18mm thickness

-Weight: 42gr including strap

-Acrylic Glass

-Movement: Swiss,  Manual wind, Incabloc, sweep second, 17 jewels, f = 18,000 A/h, power reserve 36h.

SHIPPING

WORLDWIDE REGISTERED AND TRACKED POSTAGE ONLY.  100% GUARANTEED DELIVERY 

 NO EXTRA CHARGES FOR BUYERS OUTSIDE EUROPEAN UNION.

CHECK MY FEEDBACK TO SEE THE COMMENTS OF MY CUSTOMERS! 

THANKS FOR WATCHING!

  • Condition: Used
  • Condition: Almost Very Good Cosmetic Condition (rate: ***1/2* from *****), Keeps Good Time, See Uploaded Photos.
  • Bezel Color: Aluminium
  • Closure: Buckle
  • Number of Jewels: 17 Jewels
  • Indices: Sweep Second, 12-Hour Dial, Non-Numeric Hour Marks
  • Year Manufactured: 1970-1979
  • Year of Manufacture: 1972
  • Vintage: Yes
  • Band/Strap: One-Piece Strap
  • Case Thickness: 18 mm
  • Case Color: Red, Silver
  • Department: Men
  • Caseback: Snap
  • Unit Type: Unit
  • Lug Width: Specific, Unique
  • Bezel Type: Fixed
  • Watch Shape: Oval
  • Age Group: Adult
  • Style: Space / Adventure
  • Features: 12-Hour Dial, Acrylic Crystal, Central Second, Date Indicator, Swiss Made, Swiss Movement, Incabloc
  • Case Size: 46mm without the crown (Χ) 41mm lug to lug
  • Case Material: Stainless Steel, Fiberglass
  • Unit Quantity: 1
  • Movement: Mechanical (Manual)
  • Brand: Spaceman
  • Type: Wristwatch
  • Band Color: Black, Red
  • Band Material: Rubber
  • Dial Color: Red
  • Theme: Astrophysics
  • Case Finish: Matte
  • Country/Region of Manufacture: Switzerland
  • Display: Analog

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