Raketa (watch brand)

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Raketa
legal form
founding 1961
Seat Peterhof , Russia
Branch Watch industry
Website www.raketa.com

Raketa wrist watch with 24-hour dial - 1969

Raketa (Russ: Ракета) is a brand of watches from the Soviet Union , manufactured since 1961 by the Petrodvorets watch factory in Saint Petersburg . This oldest surviving pre-communist factory in Russia was founded by Peter the Great in 1721. In her early days she made works of art out of precious stones for the Tsar and his family. In the 1980s, production ran at 4.5 million watches a year. Raketa watches were used by the Red Army as well as the Soviet Navy . Its members took them on polar research trips and the Soviet civilian population wore them as well.

The origin of the brand

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin made the first trip in history into outer space in his Vostok 1 rocket . The Petrodvorets watch factory named its watches “Raketa” (the Russian word for “rocket”) in honor of Yuri Gagarin. However, at the height of the Cold War , the Western world attached a negative sentiment to this name. Raketa has been associated with the armament of R-16 ballistic ICBMs . This negative association in the western world was dramatized in 1976, when the Soviet government took the decision to withdraw the R-16 missiles, several thousand workers at the Petrodvorets watch factory decided to black as a token of their mourning for the loss of the R-16 missiles dressed to appear for work. This joke appeared on the front page of several Soviet newspapers with the sentence "The Raketa watches are losing their big brother R-16"

Before Petrodvorets started manufacturing clockworks , the factory made technical stones for defense technology and the clock industry. In 1949 the first clocks left the factory under the names Zwesta and Pobeda . The new original brand Raketa came on the market in 1961. In-house research developed the new precision movement “Raketa-2609N”. On this basis, the Petrodworez watch factory launched over two dozen new Raketa drives: automatic watches, watches with calendar information, watches with 24-hour dial for polar explorers, anti-magnetic watches for nuclear war , robust military watches . Petrodvorets mechanical drive raketa has been exported all over the communist world. They have a reputation for being among the most solid and reliable watches in the world.

Awards

Running models

Wristwatches, pocket watches, polar explorer watches, naval watches, army watches, air force watches, special watches, chronographs.

Drives

The current production of the Petrodvorets watch factory is mainly based on the hand-wound Raketa drives:

  • Raketa-2609NA: 12-hour drive with central seconds hand
  • Raketa-2623NA: 24-hour drive with central seconds hand
  • Raketa-2614: 12-hour drive with date display
  • Raketa-2628N: 12-hour drive, with display of the day of the week and the date
  • Raketa-26690: 12-hour drive with a three-part dial, one for the 24 hours, another for the day of the week, a third for the day of the month
  • Raketa-26689: 12-hour drive with moon phase display

The special watch for the blind is also remarkable : equipped with the “Raketa-2601” it only shows hours and minutes. The viewing cover opens by pressing the winding crown: the dial appears as a relief and can be read by touch.

Petrodvorets also makes electronic quartz watches; the drive is named “Raketa-2359”.

gallery

  • Raketa Sport, 1967

  • "Raketa" Soviet polar explorer watch, 1969

  • Raketa, 1978

  • Raketa with 24 hour drive

  • "Petrodvorets Classic", 1985

References

  1. ↑ Kataog RAKETA uhren from 1961 ( Memento of the original from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.raketa.com

Web links

Commons : Raketa  - collection of images, videos and audio files