Citizen has a beautiful range of vintage alarm watches, some of them with date, some of them more simple, like this one, without a date.
Here is the no date version of the Citizen alarm, the Citizen College Alarm. It is marked Parawater and this fact, along with the serial no, is dating it to March 1968. The design is simple and clean, the case is made in stainless steel, with a domed acrylic crystal. Read about how to date a vintage Citizen here.
One of the best feature of the watch is the pie-pan dial look. On closer examination the dial turns out to be flat but the two types of finishing and tone gives it this lovely appearance. The central part has a silver sunburst effect while the outer ring has a circular one. On this circular part we can see the polished applied hour markers that have a black painted line or two (for 12, 3 6 and 9). It is marked in black writing: “Citizen College Alarm” at 12 and “parawater 17” at 6. The 4 polished hands are for showing the time and the shorter one, with a triangular tip is for the alarm. The hour hand (as well as the minute one) has a a central longitudinal black line, to match the hour markers.
The case is made in stainless steel, with 38 mm diameter, the lugs are elegant and the two unsigned crowns are easy to operate and still very well suited to compliment the elegant design. The bracelet and the clasp is made in stainless steel too.
The movement is the Citizen calibre hand winding 9812 (no date), 17 Jewels, 18000 bph. The crowns are one for the time and the one for the alarm. The crown at 2 o’clock in first position is winding the alarm and the alarm is deactivated. If you pull it in the second position you can set the alarm (counterclockwise) and the alarm is activated. Pressing it while the alarm is ringing will stop it. The crown at 4 will wind the watch and pulling it out will set the time. The alarm will ring for 13-16 seconds. The movement has a power reserve of about 40-45 hours and it runs great if winding it once a day. It is Parashock.
Read more about another beautiful Citizen alarm, the Citizen Alarm Date here.