The 1940s & 1950s were dominated by ladies’ cocktail watches and dress watches and mens’ smaller dress watches, with chronographs and triple-calendars with pointer-dates being popular complications. This was an era when Art Deco designs were slowly giving way to more casual and sporty approaches.

In the 1950s, Alsta started to make dress watches for men including some beautiful and unusual pieces, such as the Bellette alarm watch, riding the wave of popularity of the Cricket from Vulcain and Memovox from Jaeger Le Coultre.

By 1961 Alstater ran Alsta Watches part-time, and yet Alsta produced some of its best-known watches during the 1960s. Along with Breitling, Omega, and Heuer, Alsta became a leader in sport watches sold in America.
Skin divers are worn against the skin, rather than against a wetsuit, and were built for shallower dives than SCUBA watches. Skin divers are also slimmer than SCUBA watches, typically water- proof to 100m, and almost always sport right angles between the lugs.

During the 1960s and 70s, Alsta also issued many fascinating dress watches, often including day- date and alarm complications.

Between the 50s the first half of the 70s, Alsta produced numerous chronographs with movements including Landeron and Valjoux units. These were both dress and sports models and are today extremely rare on the pre-owned watch market. The chronographs from the 50s were dressier and smaller, and the more robust sports chronos of the 60s and 70s were larger and are even rarer than the early models.

Always trying to capture the Zeitgeist of the moment, Alsta started to produce steel sports watches in the late 1960s and found success, as did many manufacturers including Rolex and Omega.

Alsta increased the water resistance of its range to dive standards and produced a host of dive watches under the round-case Nautoscaph and cushion-case Superautomatic families. Some outliers exist, too, including the Surf n Ski line, which was made to dive specifications but aimed at the trendy Ski crowds of Whistler and Courchevel. The Surf n Ski watches are basically divers with day-date function, “Mercedes” hands and were produced in the late 70s along with the company’s best-known diver, the Nautoscaph, when the company was fighting to stay in business.

In 1971 Mr. Alstater retired and Star Watch Company of Los Angeles continued releasing watches under the Alsta name until 1978.

In the struggle against the quartz watches dominating the lower end of the market, Alsta began using a new 70s-vibe logo, and began to market the more famous Nautoscaph and Superautomatic. The original ranges were powered by a Felsa 4007N movement, and later an ETA 2452 or 2783. The rarest combination, which appeared on both model ranges, was the A. Schild 2066 movement with a day-date complication.

Alsta unfortunately succumbed to the ‘quartz crisis’ (the advancement in the watchmaking industry caused by the advent of quartz watches in the 1970s and early 1980s, that largely replaced mechanical watches around the world) in 1978, and had to shut its doors. It was surprising that Alsta did not venture into quartz watches, as throughout its history it twisted and turned, was at the forefront of trends, made white label watches sold by other brands, and usually found success at whatever it did. Arguably, Alsta could have made a success of a range of quartz watches, but we shall never know. They officially closed in 1982 although the final watches were produced in 1978.

In the original “Jaws” film from 1975, Richard Dreyfus portrays an enthusiastic oceanographer Matt Hooper. It is Hooper who immortalised the Superautomatic on the Speidel Mach 1 porthole bracelet, however, it took until 2010 before watch sleuths worked out what he was actually wearing in the movie.

There is another, perhaps less-known, movie appearance by the Superautomatic. Johnny Depp’s Raoul Duke character wore one in the 1998 movie “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. It is known among Fear and Loathing aficionados that Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson loaned Johnny Depp clothing to personify him in the movie. Could Raoul’s Superautomatic be Hunter’s personal watch?

During the 1970s, perhaps looking for ways to beat the quartz revolution, Alsta produced watches for numerous other brands such as Wakmann, which was the U.S. distributor of Breitling from the 1940s through the 1970s. Like Alsta, Wakmann was based in New York and was founded immediately after WW2. Both companies cased watch movements for other brands in addition to their own, and it is likely that there was a business relationship between the two companies including sourcing components together to get reduced prices for higher quantities. Wakmann Nautoscaphs can be seen now and again on the market. They look identical to the Alsta version except for the name on the dial.

Alsta finally ground to a halt and in 1982 it was all over. Their legacy now lives on in the brand which rose officially from its ashes in 2017 when it was taken over by Glasgow-based watch enthusiast Angus MacFadyen. Today Alsta continues to draw on its history and heritage while issuing new watches in the 21st century. Its rich back catalog is a constant source of inspiration for its designers, as well as a rewarding niche for collectors to explore.

Like so many smaller brands, its history is a bit spotty. No archives from the original brand have been uncovered but the search never stops. Much of the archive was lost to water damage not long after the company ceased in 1978, but hopefully one day information will resurface.