On July 31, 1954, on K2’s northeast ridge, Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli set foot on the world’s second-highest peak. It was metal-freezing cold, oxygen was scarce, and beneath their gloves, a small Swiss mechanism with an insect’s name ticked. This same Vulcain Cricket, released barely seven years earlier from the workshops of La Chaux-de-Fonds, was about to experience another, more subdued life, in the corridors of the White House. There it would earn a nickname that would stick forever: the presidents’ watch.
The Mechanical Alarm: Robert Ditisheim’s Challenge
Before equipping heads of state, the Cricket first had to solve a problem that two rival manufacturers had already attempted and failed, in 1910 and then in 1920: making an alarm sound in a wrist-watch without the vibrations ruining the movement's precision, and without the sound being too discreet to be useful. Robert Ditisheim, from the founding family of the manufacture established in 1858, tackled the challenge in the early 1940s. In 1942, his caliber 120, a 22-millimeter manual movement, solved part of the problem thanks to two independent barrels, one for the watch's operation and the other for the alarm, so that the alarm no longer drew energy from the movement.
The question of volume remained. Robert consulted French physicist Paul Langevin, who gave him an almost childish idea: if a tiny cricket can carry its song over long distances, a watch mechanism should be able to do the same. It would take five more years to turn the intuition into a patent: a hammer strikes an internal membrane that resonates, and a double case back with holes acts as a soundbox. The sound, sharp and shrill, indeed resembles the cricket's song. Presented to the public in 1947, the Cricket won the chronometry competition at the Neuchâtel Observatory the very next year, proving that the acoustic feat had not compromised precision.
The Presidents' Watch, from Truman to Johnson
It wasn't until 1953 that the Cricket took on a new dimension. The White House News Photographers Association presented Harry Truman, on the eve of his departure from office, with a 14-karat gold version engraved on the back with the knowing inscription, "One More Please." This was the phrase photographers ceaselessly shouted at him during official sessions. Dwight Eisenhower received his soon after, and his Vice President Richard Nixon received his in 1955, presented by the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors. Lyndon Johnson, however, took his passion further: he bought his own watch in Geneva, had his signature engraved on the dial, and ordered two hundred copies at once to distribute during his term. It's even said that he gladly set his alarm during the longest meetings, just to have an excuse to slip away, much to the dismay of the secret service, who, more than once, mistook the sudden ringing for something other than a simple reminder.
The Quartz Crisis: Caliber 401 and Vulcain's Decline
Success is not enough to shield a manufacture from the passage of time. In the 1970s, the quartz crisis affected the entire Swiss watchmaking industry, and Vulcain chose not to conform. The Caliber 401, intended to replace the 120, lost its second barrel in the process: the alarm, deprived of its own power reserve, dropped to fifteen seconds. Sales plummeted, and after more than a century of existence, the company was liquidated.
Caliber V-21: Helsinki's Revival
Yet, it was the presidents, once again, who would bring the Cricket back to life. In the 1980s, a Finnish jeweler named Keijo Paajanen convinced Michel Ditisheim to revive the tradition of presidential gifts, this time on the occasion of state visits to Finland. Ronald Reagan thus received his in 1988, the first American president in twenty years to wear one, followed by George Bush Senior in 1990. Gerald Ford would wait until 1995, twenty years after the Helsinki Accords, to receive the watch he was already owed. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton each left with theirs in 1997, Barack Obama received his after his 2009 inauguration, and rumor has it that Donald Trump has since joined the list. George W. Bush never visited Finland in this context, and John F. Kennedy simply didn't have the time.
The manufacture truly revived in 2001, taken over by entrepreneur Bernard Fleury, who found the old assembly line intact. The new automatic V-21 caliber abandoned manual winding for an Exomatic system with a rotor on ball bearings, some 257 components for a precision that the original caliber would not have disowned. The alarm, meanwhile, never ceased to play the same tune, the one that woke an American president when it was precisely necessary not to miss either the summit or the hour.