The Rise and Fall of Glycine: How the Airman Became a Cult Classic — Then Got Swallowed Up

September thirteenth, nineteen sixty six. Pete Conrad is in orbit above the Pacific aboard Gemini 11. On his right wrist, over his pressure suit, is a Glycine Airman. On his left wrist is an Omega Speedmaster. The hatch of the two man capsule opens for Dick Gordon's umbilical spacewalk. The next day, the hatch opens again for a standup EVA. Across the two excursions Gordon spends two hours and forty one minutes outside the closed cabin. Conrad's Airman, inside the open cockpit, is exposed to the vacuum of outer space. The watch keeps time. It is the first automatic wristwatch ever to leave Earth's atmosphere. Conrad has already taken one up the previous August aboard Gemini 5, and he will take one back up to the moon's orbit on Apollo 12 in nineteen sixty nine. By nineteen sixty six the Airman is already the favored watch of United States Air Force pilots over Vietnam. It is the watch ordered in batches by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. It is the watch on the wrists of Pan Am captains crossing the international date line. Fifty years later, on August eleventh, twenty sixteen, a Swiss conglomerate called DKSH signs the brand over to a Florida watch company. The buyer is the Invicta Watch Group, headquartered at 3069 Taft Street, Hollywood, Florida. The Invicta name is best known to American consumers from cable television shopping channels. The Airman is still in production today. It is still made in Bienne. The case shape and the twenty four hour rotating bezel are still drawn from the nineteen fifty three original. The crown logo on the dial is the same crown introduced in nineteen sixty five. But the company that ships it does not ask the questions the original company asked.