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XThe Quartz Storm

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Index

Chapter X · Act III — Owning Time

The Quartz Storm

1969–1985

A cheaper, more precise technology nearly destroys traditional watchmaking, and forces it to reinvent its purpose.

On 25 December 1969 Seiko unveils the Quartz Astron in Tokyo, the first quartz wristwatch. It costs 450,000 yen, about as much as a Toyota Corolla, and drifts only some five seconds a month: more precise than any mechanical watch and, soon, far cheaper.

Quartz

32,768 times slower · crystal at 1 Hz

Drag to turn it · arrow keys on a keyboard · double-click to face it

An analogue quartz watch: 32,768 = 2¹⁵ oscillations a second, halved fifteen times. The 1969 Astron ran at 8,192; 32,768 has been the standard since Girard-Perregaux’s calibre 350 of 1971. On screen, time runs at the speed you choose.

  1. 1Quartz crystal
  2. 2Divider, 15 stages
  3. 3Stepping motor
  4. 4Seconds hand

  1. A quartz tuning fork rings 32,768 times a second when a current drives it.

  2. A circuit halves that frequency fifteen times over: 32,768 is 2 to the power of 15.

  3. The last stage gives one pulse a second, and a stepping motor jumps the hand.

  4. Take the slider to real speed: the crystal becomes a hum, and only the last stages can be told apart by eye.

Before the 1970s Switzerland made half the world’s watches. Between 1970 and 1983 the number of Swiss watchmakers falls from 1,600 to 600.

90,000jobs in Swiss watchmaking, 1970

28,000in 1988

Reinventing the purpose

  1. The Beta 21

    The Swiss answer reaches the Basel Fair: a quartz calibre developed by sixteen houses. It comes from the Centre Electronique Horloger in Neuchâtel, founded in 1962, whose prototypes had competed at the Neuchâtel Observatory trials in 1967, alongside Seiko’s.

  2. The Royal Oak

    In the midst of the crisis, Gérald Genta designs for Audemars Piguet a luxury watch in steel, with an integrated bracelet and the exposed screws of a diving helmet. It is shown at Basel. In 1976 Genta does it again with Patek Philippe’s Nautilus.

  3. The Swatch

    Twelve models are unveiled in Zurich: a plastic case sealed by ultrasonic welding, conceived at ETA by Ernst Thomke, Elmar Mock and Jacques Müller. The name comes from “second watch”. That same month ASUAG and SSIH merge; Nicolas G. Hayek comes in in 1985, and in 1998 the group becomes the Swatch Group.

  4. The G-Shock

    Kikuo Ibe, at Casio, sets out to make a watch that survives a ten-metre fall, ten bar of pressure and ten years on one battery. The idea comes to him watching a rubber ball bounce. Quartz can be tough too.

The Line of Precision

The error a day of each chapter’s clocks, on a logarithmic scale. The line moves on with the story: each chapter draws its own stretch.

This chapter’s precision

Quartz wristwatch1969
≈ 5 s a month
  1. c. 1390 BCE: Clepsydra, ≈ half an hour a day
  2. c. 1386: Foliot tower clock, ≈ 15 min a day
  3. 1656: Huygens’s pendulum, ≈ 15 s a day
  4. c. 1715: Graham’s regulator, a few seconds a week
  5. 1761: Harrison’s H4, 5 s in 81 days
  6. 1889: Riefler regulator, ≈ 0.01 s a day
  7. 1921: Shortt-Synchronome clock, ≈ 1 s a year
  8. 1955: Essen and Parry’s caesium, ≈ 1 s in 300 years
  9. 1969: Quartz wristwatch, ≈ 5 s a month (a reference, not the best instrument of its time)

Squares are wristwatches and chronometers, not the best clock of their age: the line rises with them because the chapter tells their story.

This chapter’s sources