Signal / Сигнал
After World War II, the First State Watch Factory focused heavily on wristwatch production. This lead to a proliferation of discrete brands in the 1950s, all powered by First Moscow Watch Factory movements. These brands included Antarktida, Kirovskie, Kosmos, Mayak, Moskva, Orbita, Pobeda, Poljus, Rodina, Signal, Sportivnie, Sputnik, Stolichnie, Strela, Sturmanskie, and Vympel.
The Signal brand (Сигнал) was first introduced in 1959 as the first mechanical alarm watch ever produced in the USSR. The 18-jewel caliber 2612 was based on the A. Schild caliber AS 1475. The Soviet incarnation was a strong, reliable, and accurate movement that would continue to be produced for many decades with only minor alterations.
The most notable feature of this watch was the dual-crown setup. The top crown winds and sets the alarm; the special alarm hand/sub-dial help adjust the alarm time to the nearest 15-minute interval. (One quirk of the caliber 2612 is that the alarm hand can only be set counter-clockwise.) The bottom crown behaves normally for winding the mainspring and setting the current time.
The Signal brand was retired in 1964, when all individual First Moscow Watch Factory brands were consolidated under a single trademark: Poljot. However, alarm watches continued to be produced for over four more decades under the Poljot name.
4 окт 2024
