Glycine - 1970s Vacuum High Frequency 38mm

WHAT WE LOVE:

The Glycine Vacuum is one of the great unsung achievements of mid-twentieth century Swiss watchmaking — and the story behind it is as interesting as the watch itself. In the early 1960s, Glycine salesman Hans Ulrich Klingenberg had the idea of evacuating the air from inside a watch case: removing dust, moisture, oxygen, and contaminants entirely, so that the lubricating oils inside could never degrade through oxidation or contamination. The resulting watch — sealed against the ingress of air molecules far smaller than water molecules — required extraordinary case gasket quality to hold the vacuum, and the Magdeburg hemispheres logo that identifies every genuine Vacuum watch references a seventeenth-century physics experiment that demonstrated the power of atmospheric pressure. To hold a vacuum against that pressure is a genuine engineering achievement.

This 1970s Vacuum High Frequency pairs that case technology with a high-beat ETA 2728 movement beating at 28,800 vibrations per hour — the "High Frequency" designation reflecting the elevated beat rate that was, in the early 1970s, considered the frontier of mechanical timekeeping precision. The gold-tone case has the bold, assertive 1970s case architecture that this era of Swiss watchmaking produced with real confidence, and the white dial with its applied gold-tone indices and day-date display at 3 o'clock reads cleanly and immediately. This is a genuinely unusual and historically interesting watch from a brand that very few collectors have properly discovered.

WHAT'S INSIDE:

The movement is the ETA Calibre 2728 — a 28,800 vph (8 beats per second) automatic with Incabloc shock protection, driving hours, minutes, sweep seconds, day and date. The Vacuum case sealing system requires specialist knowledge to open correctly — the bezel clamps at 12 and 6 o'clock are the identifying markers of genuine Vacuum construction.

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