MENTOR Jumping Hour TV Watch cal.BF896 / 1970s Mechanical Digital

— The good old jumping hour —

A Swiss mechanical digital watch of the 1970s, styled like a cathode-ray television.

With no hands, telling time by rotating discs, its construction blurs the line between analogue and digital while wearing the futurism of its period.

Three windows — hours, minutes and date — are set out in order, with the red-bordered date adding a quiet accent.

A mechanical digital watch that stands for 1970s retro-futurism. Three small windows lined up in a retro TV-screen case. Fitted with the one-jewel manual-wind Cal.BF896, a movement that carried the history of the popular mechanical watch. Mentor, a brand that developed its own designs largely for the US market. Playful vintage with all the adventure and charm of the 1970s in it.

— Cal.BF896 —

The movement is the BF896 calibre made by Baumgartner: a manual-wind, one-jewel construction with a pin-lever escapement.

Inexpensive but distinctively built, it was used widely in jumping-hour and disc-display watches and underpinned mechanical watches for the mass market.

That period character and its particular mechanical interest are exactly what make it appealing as vintage today.

— Traces of Holderbank —

The name "Mentor" was filed in 1953 and registered as a trademark covering watches, components and cases.

BADER & HAFNER SA, established in postwar Switzerland, carried the name and operated out of Holderbank and Solothurn, largely for the American market.

— A brand that kept innovating its designs —

Although its focus was the mass market, Mentor took a forward-looking stance on style.

From elegant, minimalist early timepieces it moved in the 1970s into a line of mechanical watches with digital displays — a brand that kept taking design risks well beyond what its price bracket demanded.