HMT museum, where the legacy will remain forever

Have you ever wondered about the mechanism that allows wristwatches to function without batteries? How and why do they go ‘tick-tick’ when their hands and seconds indicators rotate? How does a ‘crown’ of merely a few centimetres rotate the hands of the watch even anti-clockwise?

Wonder no more. In an effort to keep its legacy alive, HMT Watches, the country’s first wristwatch manufacturer, is set to establish a wristwatch and clock museum with wondrous collections in Bengaluru.

Work is under way on setting up the HMT Heritage Centre and Museum, which is being called the country’s first national watch heritage centre, near Jalahalli.

HMT Watches, a public sector undertaking of the Government of India, has been a pioneer in watch manufacturing in the country since 1961. The purpose behind the establishment of this museum is enhancing people’s knowledge on HMT Watches and its products, senior officers at the PSU said.

The engineering experts of HMT have manufactured and sold over 1.1 crore watches till date. Wearing an HMT watch was the dream of most of people back in the day. Former Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, H.D. Deve Gowda and Atal Bihari Vajpayee too used to wear HMT wristwatches and appreciated their accuracy and reliability, a senior officer told The Hindu.