Sure, Analog:Shift is a business built around the love of watches — mostly mechanical watches. But, in essence, it’s our love for timepieces and timekeeping in general that are the common themes throughout the items we procure. And that includes the love of clocks: pocket watches, travel clocks, and more. After all, in the couple hundred years before the First World War, personal timekeeping was all about the pocket watch, and before that, it was larger clocks that were front and center, horologically. We still believe a good clock — such as a classic travel model from the 1920s or 1930s — has a place in the watch lover’s collection. This particular timepiece is a vintage Alsta stopwatch from the 1960s. Housed in a 54mm stainless steel case with an acrylic crystal, a notched stainless steel start/stop/winding crown, a reset button at 10:30, and a snap-back caseback, it features a gloss-white dial with an outer black 1/5th-seconds track, black and red 5-minute 'Arabic' indices, a subsidiary 30-minute counter below 12 o'clock, and a thin black handset. Alsta, famed for the watch worn by Richard Dreyfuss as "Hooper" in Jaws, was founded in the U.S. by Belgian immigrant Joseph Alstater. For decades it made hardy, handsome dive watches, only to go extinct during the Quartz Crisis — and be resurrected by an enthusiastic collector in 2014. This stopwatch, in turn, is a testament to the company's excellent midcentury output — we can’t recommend it highly enough!
