Vulcain was founded in 1858 in La Chaux-de-Fonds by Maurice Ditisheim, a pocket-watch maker who built the firm through the late 19th and early 20th centuries supplying the European and American markets. Through the 1920s and 1930s the firm produced ordinary Swiss wristwatches, unremarkable alongside the Jura's larger houses. Its commercial breakthrough came via a single technical invention.
In 1947, Vulcain launched the Cricket, the first mechanical alarm wristwatch whose sound was loud enough to be heard at arm's length. The innovation was the Cal. 120 alarm movement, which used a double-membrane caseback (two metal plates separated by an air gap) to amplify the alarm hammer's strike, turning a normally weak 6mm hammer into a buzzer audible across a small room. Earlier alarm wristwatches by Eterna and others existed but were inaudible in practice; the Cricket was the first that actually functioned as a practical alarm.
The Cricket became known as the President's Watch. In 1952, then-President Harry Truman was photographed wearing one; the Watch Industry of America then presented Crickets to every US President through Reagan. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan all wore them publicly. The tradition made Vulcain's Cricket an iconic 1950s-1970s Americana wristwatch, and the brand traded heavily on the association through its advertising. The firm also became known for diving alarm watches (the Nautical, 1961), which used the same amplification principle underwater to alert divers to decompression times.
Vulcain, like many Swiss mid-tier houses, suffered through the quartz crisis and was effectively dormant from the 1980s into the early 2000s. In 2002, investor Bernard Fleury acquired the brand and re-established production in Le Locle, relaunching the Cricket with the original Cal. 120 design as the modern Cal. V-10. The contemporary collection includes Cricket 50s Presidents (a faithful reissue of the Truman-era reference), Cricket Nautical Heritage (the 1961 dive-alarm revival), and updated references with GMT and calendar complications. Retail runs from approximately CHF 4,500 (50s Presidents steel) to CHF 15,000+ (gold limited editions) and over CHF 25,000 for the more complicated Cricket references.
