Bruce's World of Watches: Doxa

By Bruce Shawkey

Doxa was founded in 1889 by Georges Ducommun.

Here are pictures of a couple of Doxa watches, one from the 1940s (left), and one from the 1960s. Both images are from the Latin America edition of Europa Star, a trade magazine:

They are most famous for their Sub 300 dive watch, made famous by Clive Cussler in his Dirk Pitt adventure novels.

Doxa is also famous for its "grafic" (lower-case g) models following the popularity of the "Bauhaus" movement (less is more) of the 1950s:

Here are some more images of Doxa watches:

Here are more Doxa articles I've written:

interesting ad in the Nov./Dec.1957 issue of Swiss Horological Journal pictures shows an experimental Ford automobile, the FX Atmos, and claims "it's time to catch up with the times and choose a 1957 Doxa model" and shows an automatic model with date.

Cars and watches have always seemed to go together, from the earliest days to James Bond and his Omega watch and BMW automobile.

Anyway, check out the prototype auto that Doxa pictured with its watch:

Wow! Check out those tailfins. And those needles sticking out the front. And the plexiglass bubble top.

It's no coincidence the car looks like a rocket. This was the 1950s, the age of rockets, when anything was possible through the miracle of science.

Doxa was founded in 1889. It was most famous for the Sub 300 divers' watch, but made many other watch models through the decades

When most wristwatch collectors think of the Doxa brand, they think of the "SUB" series. Certainly the SUB series (beginning with the Sub 300 unveiled at the Basel Fair in 1967) has comprised a good chunk of Doxa's income through the years. That’s due in part to author Clive Cussler and his hugely successful adventure series starring Dirk Pitt. But what many collectors do not realize is that Doxa has manufactured all kinds of wrist watches since their founding.

Georges Ducommun

So let’s take a closer look at the company and its watches. Doxa was founded in 1889 in the city of Le Locle, in the canton (district) of Neuchatel. Its founder, Georges Ducommun (1868-1936, right), was born in Le Locle to a poor family and was one of 13 children. At age 12, Georges apprenticed with a manufacturer specializing in casing watch movements. He started his own watch repair business when he was 20. A year later, he founded the company. It is not mentioned in company historical records why he chose the name Doxa. We can perhaps guess that Ducommun chose Doxa because it means “glory” in ancient Greek, and further it’s pronounced the same in multiple languages, and easy to remember.

Like most manufacturers, little is known about Doxa’s early years. His first recognition outside the Jura region occurred in 1905 at the “Exposition Universelle at Internationale” in Liege, Belgium where one of his pocket watches was honored. A year later, an anti-magnetic Doxa won the gold medal at the World’s Fair in Milan.

As is the situation with most watch manufacturers, we don’t know when Doxa offered its first cased wrist watch. Converted pocket watches made their first appearance in the ‘20s (left) and later were made into into aviators’ watches for the German Air Force in the late 1920s (below right).

By the time he reached his 30s, Ducommun became a car enthusiast, as did many young industrialists at that time when automobiles were emerging. He became one of the region's first owners of an automobile. He had a garage built on his property and had his own gasoline pump. Ducommun patented an 8-day clock in 1908 that found its way into Bugatti race cars, among others. That single event seemed to cement the company’s future as a purveyor of timekeeping devices to the sport side of the market. Though it is possible to find vintage Doxa dress watches, most watches are decidedly sporty in look and function.

The earliest factory-cased wrist watches started appearing in the 1930s, and are very typical of watches from the period (below).

Typical rectangle dress watches from the '30s

Ducommun died in 1936, at the age of 68. The company was taken over by his son-in-law, Jacques Nardin, grandson of Ulysse Nardin, the famous watchmaker of Le Locle. By this time, Doxa’s focus is clearly on wrist watches.

This period just before WWII appears to have been lucrative for Doxa. They were regular exhibitors at the annual Basel exhibition and were covered in the trade magazines. Some of those beautiful full-page ads appear in the full version of this story, available at the link at the end of this story. We also see aviator’s style watches and it is evident that some of these Doxa watches found their way into the German military during the 1930s and ‘40s, bearing military markings and the usual styling characteristics.

3/3 chronograph

The race to resume post-war innovation resumed, as Doxa rolled out a triple register, triple date chronograph, using one of the first versions of the Valjoux 72C. It was obviously pitched as a watch for race car drivers (left).

Of Course, the big story in the 1950s was the race to bring automatic movements into the mainstream market. Doxa’s efforts in this regard have been largely undocumented, but we do know that the company used ebauches from other companies, including Ebel, Favre Leuba, Girard Perregaux, Zodiac, and most commonly from ETA, notably the Cal. 2472, which we’ll expand upon a little later.

Doxa Grafic

Arguably, the highlight for Doxa in the 1950s was the introduction of the “Grafic” model in ‘57. It was the antithesis of the “retro-modern” design movement of the ‘50s, instead incorporating the Bauhaus theory of design (“less is more”). It features a dial with no numerals and an unusual date placement at 10:00. Instead of positioning the brand name squarely at the center of the dial, it is placed it in the lower right-hand corner, reminiscent of a painter’s signature.

Ad for Doxa Grafic

The 1960s saw Doxa’s head of development eyeing a potential market for a watch for divers. Divers’ watches up to that time had been expensive and mostly dedicated to professional divers and the military.

Doxa developed a watch case from a solid block of stainless steel, which passed moisture-leak tests to an equivalent depth of 300 meters. You can probably guess where this is going, but in 1967 at the Basel Exposition, Doxa unveiled the Sub 300T. It featured a radical bright orange dial (for easier viewing as one went deeper under water). A patented rotating bezel ring was engraved with two scales. The inner scale, showing minutes, and luminous bezel “dots” could be used in conjunction with the enlarged minute hand to monitor remaining dive time. The outer ring again used in conjunction with the inner ring showed how much time the diver had at specific depths before decompression stops were needed.

Further, the bezel ring was knurled (for easy turning with gloved hands) and turned in one direction only (to avoid accidental reverse turning which could prove deadly). Powering the Sub 300T was the time-tested ETA automatic Caliber 2472, mentioned earlier. The “T” stands for Tritium, the radioactive paint compound used on the dial and hands. The watch caught on quickly in the diving community. A more detailed discussion of the 300T appears in the full version of the story.

Today, the SUB300T has spawned such a large (and often confusing) variety of models, that Doxa and SUB are synonymous. If you go to the website, the SUB, with all its various incarnations, is all you will see. But continuing with our history, Doxa was acquired by Aubry Frères in 1978. Aubry, which eventually became CWD, managed the brand until 1997 when Doxa was sold to the Jenny (pronounced YEN-ee) company of Switzerland.

Under Jenny’s stewardship, the Doxa/SUB brand has flourished. Perhaps some day, Doxa will again offer other sport-style watches, or perhaps a re-issue of the Grafic. But for now, they are all about the SUB. There are so many variations on a theme of the original 300T as to be ridiculous, in my opinion. You have multiple dial colors and choice of bracelet or bands made of synthetic rubber in multiple colors.

A rainbow of SUBs

I guess on the one hand, it’s nice because the watch enthusiast of more modest means can buy into the “SUB club” for as little as $950. That gets you a SUB 200 (not a 300) with automatic mechanical movement and a band made of rubber. (For $40 extra you can get it with a steel bracelet.) These days, anything with a “name” under $1,000 with a mechanical movement is a bargain. On the other hand, Doxa’s “mono-culture” of offering some 60 variations on a single theme dilutes the prestige of owning one if SUBs are now as common as cardboard sandwich boxes from McDonald’s. It will be interesting to see if Doxa survives and flourishes betting all their chips on a dive watch.

Here some additional Doxa images:

Author’s note: If you are interested in exploring more of the lore and legend of the Doxa SUB series, I recommend you consult Dr. Peter McClean Millar’s website, https://www.doxa300t.com/index.htm. Millar literally wrote the book on the on the SUB series. Much of the information floating around the ‘Net about the SUB series is often confusing, contradictory, or just plain wrong. I found Millar’s website to be the most accurate. He has basically made the Doxa SUB series a life pursuit.

When most wristwatch collectors think of the Doxa brand, they think of the "Sub" series. Certainly the Sub series (beginning with the Sub 300 unveiled at the Basel Fair in 1967) comprises a good deal of Doxa's income. But what many collectors do not realize is that Doxa has manufactured all kinds of wristwatches since their founding in 1889. One of their more unusual watches that came out in the 1950s was the "Lunesol," shown here in ad ad from a March/April 1957 ad in Swiss Horological Journal:

The hour hand in this watch is replaced by a wheel, imprinted with an image of the sun and the moon, which turns behind the dial of the watch. The sun appears at 6 a.m. and marks the hours of the day. It is followed, 12 hours later, by the moon, which indicates the hours of night. The minute and second hands are of conventional design. Here is a closeup of the sun and moon symbols:

It was named the Reference 15003, with a 21-jewel manual wind movement. It was advertised as waterproof, shock-proof, antimagnetic, and was powered by an unbreakable mainspring

The second hand, instead of "sweeping" like the more common second hands, instead "jumped" in one-second increments. The balance wheel administered the usual five impulses per second, but only one impulse was transmitted by an auxiliary escapement to the second hand. The second hand also stopped or "hacked" when the winding crown was pressed down. When the winding crown was pulled out, the entire movement stopped, to allow to-the-second synchronization with a radio time signal or other independent timing device.

Here is the full advertisement for the watch from the March/April 1957 issue of Swiss Horological Journal: