====== Accurist ======
**Accurist** is an [[England|English]] watch brand dating to [[1938]].

===== History =====
Rebecca and Asher Loftus began importing Swiss timepieces in [[1938]]. At their shop in London's watchmaking district, [[Clerkenwell]], the Loftus family eventually decided to start their own brand of watches.

The **Accurist** brand was created in [[1946]]. The name is a combination of "accurate" and "wrist" and can be seen as a British equivalent of [[Timex]] in the United States. The company quickly focused on [[jewel]] count as a differentiator, promoting the benefits of a 21-jewel [[Swiss lever]] movement. Like [[Bulova]], the brand quickly turned to television to reach a national audience, and it became quite well-known.

In [[1967]], Accurist launched the **[[Old England]]** brand. Focused on [[fashion watch]]es, Old England was an overnight sensation, driven by [[Richard Loftus]]' bright pop-culture designs. Soon, watches with the Union Jack or the logo of popular brands like Pepsi were on the wrists of stars like the Beatles, Twiggy, and Princess Anne. The brand launched new designs every six months, presaging the fashion watch industry, and rising to become the sales leader in the United States and UK by [[1970]]. But Old England watches were more expensive than many alternatives, using Swiss components and based in [[La Chaux-de-Fonds]].

Accurist and Old England embraced [[quartz]] watches in the 1970s, especially [[LED]] and [[LCD]] models. The company's range of 9 karat gold and [[gold filled]] watches gave a sense of luxury at a bargain price. The broad range appealed to men and women, and were the standard for pilots of the new Concorde jet plane.

In [[1983]], Accurist began sourcing entire watches from Japan, further reducing prices and increasing sales fivefold in the 1980s. The company also sponsored British Telecom's "Speaking Clock", becoming a household name thanks to the phrase, "at the third stroke, the time sponsored by Accurist is..."

In the 1990s, Accurist would capitalize on the enthusiasm for the millennium by sponsoring a Millenium Countdown clock at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Starting in July, [[1996]], a [[GPS]]-synchronized clock at the meridian proclaimed that it "records the time for the world." The company capitalized on this with a line of Millenium timepieces, including a [[grand complication]] with a [[perpetual calendar]], [[repeater]], and [[split seconds]] [[chronograph]].

Other brands by Accurist included **Accu 2**, a fashion watch line with [[Swarovski]] crystals, and **Regency**, a domestic equivalent of Old England.


{{tag>Watch_brands Watch_brands_England}}