Poljot
Poljot ( Russian Полёт - "the flight") was the best-known watch brand of the former First Moscow Watch Factory, which was wound up due to bankruptcy in 2004, and at the same time the nickname of the Moscow factory.
General
The First Moscow Watch Factory produced fully mechanical wristwatches from 1930 until it went bankrupt in 2004 . Since December 20, 1935, the factory carried the suffix Kirow in honor of the revolutionary Sergei Mironowitsch Kirow. A “Sturmanskie” manufactured by the First Moscow Watch Factory was the first watch to go into space with the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961 . In 1964, the Moscow plant was renamed Polyot ( Russian Полёт , flight) in honor of the first space flight.
In the watches of the Poljot brand, various self-made movements were used, such as the chronograph caliber 3133, the simple movement 2614, the alarm clock caliber 2612 or the automatic movement 2416. Furthermore, the caliber 2824 from ETA SA was built into automatic Poljot watches. The chronograph caliber 3133 (also produced with a moon phase display as caliber 31679 and with a 24-hour display as caliber 31681) is produced on former Swiss machines, among other things. After the advent of quartz watches and the quartz crisis that it triggered , the production machines were sold from Switzerland to the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
The chronograph caliber 3133 was based on a former Valjoux caliber. The alarm clock caliber 2612.2, on the other hand, was based on an old Venus caliber. There were also hand-wound calibres and special calibers, for example with a 24-hour display or day / night display.
After the political change, Poljot watches were also produced in the 1990s and up to the bankruptcy in 2004, the design and design of which were based on those of established western manufacturers.
After the bankruptcy in 2004, large parts of the production were taken over by the Maktime company, which itself went bankrupt in 2011. Since then, none of the Poljot calibers previously produced by the First Moscow Watch Factory have been manufactured.
Usage of the brand name today
Even today, numerous watches are still being offered by a large number of dealers as 'new' and under the brand name Poljot. Often the necessary information is missing as to whether it is just old stocks or, if applicable, imitations. The information about the place of manufacture of the watches is also often missing.
Registered brand names
- Poljot
- Golden Poljot
Brand names sold
Web links
- Official homepage of a successor company
- Description of the movements
- Collection with many Poljot watches
- Poljot clockworks - description ( Memento from January 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive )