Beginning in the latter half of the 20th century, wristwatches began to get cheaper and more accurate. This was due to the invention of the quartz watch, which is an electrical or battery-powered watch. Quartz is the most common alternative to a mechanical watch.
Quartz watches can be incredibly cheap or jaw-droppingly expensive. What they all have in common is great timekeeping accuracy. To understand why quartz watches are so accurate, we have to understand exactly what makes them tick, quite literally.
Quartz Watch Origins
Digital Quartz Clock 12' Silent Non-Ticking Decor Wall Clock Battery Operated Easy to Read Living Room Bedroom Kids Room Home Decor Average Rating: ( 5.0 ) stars out of 5 stars 1 ratings, based on 1 reviews. Introduce a modern touch to the home or office with this standout Tempus quartz wall clock. Wall clock features a black plastic frame with a shatter-free lens Large 11.8'Dia. Face size View all product Details & Specifications.
You may never have heard of the 'quartz crisis,' but if you were a watchmaker or watch aficionado in the 1970s, it was unavoidable. The watchmaking industry had seen many advancements in the centuries since the first pocket watch was invented in the early 16th century, but nothing had been as seismic as the creation of the quartz watch.
Thefirst quartz clock was created in 1927 at Bell Telephone Laboratories. In the 20th century, the mythical Bell Labs was the birthplace of many of the world's most transformative inventions, and the quartz clock certainly transformed the world. It was years before the quartz mechanics were made small enough to fit into a watch, but when it happened, everything changed. So began the quartz revolution (one person's revolution is another's crisis).
That pivotal momenthappened on Christmas Day, 1969. Seiko, a Japanese watchmaking company, released the Astron, a limited edition watch that cost as much as a car. Despite those pricey beginnings, it would take only a few more years before quartz watches were so abundant that the formerly dominant watchmakers of Switzerland were in a panic.
Analog vs Digital Watches
For most of their history, watches have been analog. That is to say, they have had a face with a physical hour, minutes, and, usually, second hand. The quartz revolution in watchmaking coincided with the explosion of digital watches, which have electronic light displays. The first digital watch was released to the public in 1972 and was created by an American company, Hamilton Watch Co.
Though the first digital watch was American, it was Japan that took the concept, improved it, and made it cheaper. Seiko, naturally, led the charge and was soon one of the biggest watchmakers in the world. The groundbreaking company smartly opted to make both quartz analog and digital watches, helping them to continue to dominate a market they helped invent.
Timekeeping for dummies
To appreciate the huge transformation that quartz watches ushered in is to understandhow a quartz watch works, and that first requires briefly discussing how watches in general operate.
The original clocks used a mix of swinging pendulums and gears to keep track of seconds and then calculate up to count out minutes and hours. The revelation that pendulums were an ideal tool for keeping accurate time was first made by Galileo Galilei, perhaps best known for being the man whose defense of heliocentrism led to his house arrest for the rest of his life.
Pendulums are, indeed, handy, but hardly practical to wear on your wrists. Mechanical watches replaced them with escapements and oscillators. These two parts work together like a pendulum, tracking the passing of time through back-and-forth movements. For centuries, that was the most accurate means of keeping time. Then quartz oscillations were discovered.
How Do Quartz Watches Work?
Quartz is the second most common mineral on earth, but aside for its abundance, its most important feature is that it is piezoelectric. When electricity is sent through a quartz crystal, it vibrates, or oscillates. The frequency at which quartz crystals oscillate, always 32,678 times per second, is used to determine the passage of time.
A quartz watch uses battery power to send a constant electric charge through the quartz crystal. A quartz watch, like a mechanical watch, has gears that turn the hands (assuming it's a mechanical watch; digital displays are entirely different), but whereas a mechanical watch depends on the oscillator to keep time, in a quartz watch, the quartz crystal is the timekeeper.
Why Are Quartz Watches More Accurate Than Mechanical?
You now know the basics of how a quartz watch works, but why would a quartz watch be inherently more accurate than a mechanical watch? Well, there are a variety of factors, but the first one we'll focus on is basic physics.
For a mechanical watch to oscillate, energy must be sent through its many parts to turn the gears, escapement, and oscillator. That energy is either supplied by manually winding the watch or, in automatic watches, by the natural movement of the wearer's wrists.
Those moving parts create friction and consume energy, meaning that no matter how regularly you wind your watch, some of your effort is being lost. A quartz watch minimizes moving parts and gets its energy from a battery, so the power necessary to keep the crystal oscillating isn't lost.
Speaking of oscillations, the natural frequency of quartz is also just a much more reliable means of keeping time than the physical movements of a mechanical watch, no matter how well-crafted it might be. Even the greatest watchmakers in Switzerland are constrained by the physical realities of creating an incredibly intricate machine.
The slightest mistake will change how accurate the watch works.A quartz crystal will always oscillate at the same frequency, no matter how poorly designed the rest of the watch is.
Finally, timekeeping accuracy is affected by the natural forces of the universe; specifically, gravity. Like everything else, the mechanical parts of a watch are subject to gravity's pull. Watchmakers have been wrestling with this for centuries, and have found numerous solutions to this problem, including the incredibly cool-looking tourbillon designs.
Modern mechanical watch designs have mostly eliminated the effects of gravity, but for quartz watches, it isn't even an issue. A quartz crystal will oscillate the same no matter what.
Here is one guy's take on why a quartz watch should probably be your watch of choice for your everyday carry (EDC) – the reliable watch you wear on a daily basis.
Quartz Digital Clock Radios
How Much More Accurate Are Quartz Watches?
Like mechanical watches, quartz watches can vary dramatically in quality. Yet, regardless of quality differences, the average accuracy of a standard quartz watch will begreater than or equal to the best mechanical watches in the world.
With all this talk of accuracy, though, it's important to understand that we're talking about the gain or loss of mere seconds per day. A typical quartz watch gains or loses one second a day, while the best mechanical watches average three seconds. The best quartz watches on the market average a change of .02 seconds a day.
These changes are so small that you generally only notice them after a collective gain or loss of a few weeks or more. Generally, the only time people need something with greater accuracy than a standard quartz watch is when they're doing scientific measurements. For those people, there exists atomic clocks and watches.
For the rest of us mere mortals, a quartz watch will more than accurate enough to make sure you never miss the start of the big game.
In watchmaking, the quartz crisis is the upheaval in the industry caused by the advent of quartz watches in the 1970s and early 1980s, that largely replaced mechanical watches around the world.[1][2] It caused a significant decline of the Swiss watchmaking industry, which chose to remain focused on traditional mechanical watches, while the majority of the world's watch production shifted to Asian companies such as Seiko, Citizen, and Casio in Japan that embraced the new electronic technology.[3][4]
The quartz crisis took place amid the global Digital Revolution (Third Industrial Revolution) which was gaining momentum during the late 1950s.[5][6] The crisis started with the Astron, which was the world's first quartz watch introduced by Seiko in December 1969.[3][4][7][8] The key advances included replacing the mechanical or electromechanical movement with a quartz clock movement as well as replacing analog displays with digital displays such as LED displays and later liquid-crystal displays (LCDs).[3][4][8] In general, quartz timepieces are much more accurate than mechanical timepieces, in addition to having a much lower sale price.[3][4][9]
History[edit]
Before the crisis[edit]
During World War II, Swiss neutrality permitted the watch industry to continue making consumer time-keeping apparatus, while the major nations of the world shifted timing apparatus production to timing devices for military ordnance. As a result, the Swiss watch industry enjoyed an effective monopoly. The industry prospered in the absence of any real competition. Thus, prior to the 1970s, the Swiss watch industry had 50% of the world watch market.[10]
In the early 1950s a joint venture between the Elgin Watch Company in the United States and Lip of France to produce an electromechanical watch – one powered by a small battery rather than an unwinding spring – laid the groundwork for the quartz watch.[11] Although the Lip-Elgin enterprise produced only prototypes, in 1957 the first battery-driven watch was in production, the American-made Hamilton 500.
In 1954, Swiss engineer Max Hetzel developed an electronic wristwatch that used an electrically charged tuning fork powered by a 1.35 volt battery. The tuning fork resonated at precisely 360 Hz and it powered the hands of the watch through an electromechanical gear train. This watch was called the Accutron and was marketed by Bulova, starting in 1960. Although Bulova did not have the first battery-powered wristwatch, the Accutron was a powerful catalyst, as by that time the Swiss watch-manufacturing industry was a mature industry with a centuries-old global market and deeply entrenched patterns of manufacturing, marketing, and sales.
Beginning of the revolution[edit]
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, both Seiko and a consortium of Switzerland's top watch firms, including Patek Philippe, Piaget and Omega, fiercely competed to develop the first quartz wristwatch.[4][12] In 1962, the Centre Electronique Horloger (CEH), consisting of around 20 Swiss watch manufacturers, was established in Neuchâtel to develop a Swiss-made quartz wristwatch, while simultaneously in Japan, Seiko was also working on an electric watch and developing quartz technology.[13]
One of the first successes was a portable quartz clock called the Seiko Crystal Chronometer QC-951. This portable clock was used as a backup timer for marathon events in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.[4] In 1966, prototypes of the world's first quartz pocket watch were unveiled by Seiko and Longines in the Neuchâtel Observatory's 1966 competition.[14] In 1967, both the CEH and Seiko presented prototypes of quartz wristwatches to the Neuchâtel Observatory competition.[4][15]
On 25 December 1969, Seiko unveiled the Astron, the world's first quartz watch, which marked the beginning of the quartz revolution.[3][4][14][16] The first Swiss quartz analog watch – the Ebauches SA Beta 21 containing the Beta 1 movement – arrived at the 1970 Basel Fair.[14][17] The Beta 21 was released by numerous manufacturers including the Omega Electroquartz. On 6 May 1970, Hamilton introduced the Pulsar – the world's first electronic digital watch.[18]
The rise of quartz[edit]
In 1974 Omega introduced the Omega Marine Chronometer, the first watch ever to be certified as a marine chronometer, accurate to 12 seconds per year using a quartz circuit that produces 2,400,000 vibrations per second. In 1976 Omega introduced the Omega Chrono-Quartz, the world's first analogue-digital chronograph, which was succeeded within 12 months by the Calibre 1620, the company's first completely LCDchronograph wristwatch.
Despite these dramatic advancements, the Swiss hesitated to embrace quartz watches. At the time, Swiss mechanical watches dominated world markets. In addition, excellence in watchmaking was a large component of Swiss national identity. From their position of market strength, and with a national watch industry organized broadly and deeply to foster mechanical watches, many in Switzerland thought that moving into electronic watches was unnecessary. Others outside Switzerland, however, saw the advantage and further developed the technology.[19] By 1978, quartz watches overtook mechanical watches in popularity, plunging the Swiss watch industry into crisis while at the same time strengthening both the Japanese and American watch industries. This period of time was marked by a lack of innovation in Switzerland at the same time that the watch-making industries of other nations were taking full advantage of emerging technologies, specifically quartz watch technology, hence the term 'quartz crisis'.
As a result of the economic turmoil that ensued, many once-profitable and famous Swiss watch houses became insolvent or disappeared. This period of time completely upset the Swiss watch industry both economically and psychologically. During the 1970s and early 1980s, technological upheavals, i.e. the appearance of the quartz technology, and an otherwise difficult economic situation resulted in a reduction in the size of the Swiss watch industry. Between 1970 and 1983, the number of Swiss watchmakers dropped from 1,600 to 600.[20][21] Between 1970 and 1988, Swiss watch employment fell from 90,000 to 28,000.[14]
Outside Switzerland, the crisis is often referred to as the 'quartz revolution', particularly in the United States where many American companies had gone out of business or had been bought out by foreign interests by the 1960s. When the first quartz watches were introduced in 1969, the United States promptly took a technological lead in part due to microelectronics research for military and space programs. American companies like Texas Instruments, Fairchild Semiconductor, and National Semiconductor started the mass production of digital quartz watches and made them affordable.[1] It did not remain so forever; by 1978 Hong Kong exported the largest number of electronic watches worldwide, and US semiconductor companies came to pull out of the watch market entirely. With the exception of Timex and Bulova, the remaining traditional American watch companies, including Hamilton, went out of business and sold their brand names to foreign competitors; Bulova would ultimately sell to the Japanese-owned Citizen in 2008.[22]
Aftermath[edit]
The Swatch Group[edit]
Quartz Digital Clock Movements
By 1983, the crisis reached a critical point. The Swiss watch industry, which had 1,600 watchmakers in 1970, had declined to 600.[20][21] In March 1983, the two biggest Swiss watch groups, ASUAG (Allgemeine Schweizerische Uhrenindustrie AG) and SSIH (Société Suisse pour l'Industrie Horlogère), merged to form ASUAG/SSIH which later became SMH (Société de Microélectronique et d'Horlogerie) in order to save the industry.[23] This organization was the predecessor of the Swatch Group, which would be instrumental in reviving the Swiss watch industry giving a new bill of health to all brands concerned and, in 1998, was renamed the Swatch Group – the largest watchmanufacturer in the world.[23][24]
The Swatch product was sealed in a plastic case, sold as a disposable commodity with little probability of repair, and had fewer moving parts (51) than mechanical watches (about 91). Furthermore, production was essentially automated, which resulted in higher profitability.[25] The Swatch was a huge success; in less than two years, more than 2.5 million Swatches were sold.[13] Besides its own product line Swatch, the Swatch Group also acquired other watch brands including Blancpain, Breguet, Glashütte Original, Harry Winston, Longines, Omega, and Tissot.[26][27]
Renaissance of mechanical watches[edit]
The larger global market still largely reflected other trends, however. In the US domestic market, for example, the Swatch was something of a 1980s fad resting largely on variety of colors and patterns, and the bulk of production still came from offshore sites such as China and Japan, in digitally-dominated or hybrid brands like Casio, Timex, and Armitron.
Digital Clock Quartz Crystal
On the other hand, the quartz revolution drove many Swiss manufacturers to seek refuge in (or be winnowed out to) the higher end of the market, such as Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet, and Rolex. Mechanical watches have gradually become luxury goods appreciated for their elaborate craftsmanship, aesthetic appeal, and glamorous design, sometimes associated with the social status of their owners, rather than simple timekeeping devices.[28][29]
The rise of smartwatches[edit]
Since the 2010s, smartwatches have begun to significantly increase their shares in global watch market, especially after the launch of Apple Watch in 2015.[30][31][32] The current rise of smartwatches is occurring amid the global Fourth Industrial Revolution, and there are concerns over the formation of a new type of crisis which may further threaten the Swiss watchmaking industry, even though it is unlikely as those who purchase automatic and mechanical watches are usually more affluent in society and would not blanch at the opportunity to flaunt their social status.[33][34][32][35]
Quartz Digital Clock Radio
See also[edit]
Beginning in the latter half of the 20th century, wristwatches began to get cheaper and more accurate. This was due to the invention of the quartz watch, which is an electrical or battery-powered watch. Quartz is the most common alternative to a mechanical watch.
Quartz watches can be incredibly cheap or jaw-droppingly expensive. What they all have in common is great timekeeping accuracy. To understand why quartz watches are so accurate, we have to understand exactly what makes them tick, quite literally.
Quartz Watch Origins
Digital Quartz Clock 12' Silent Non-Ticking Decor Wall Clock Battery Operated Easy to Read Living Room Bedroom Kids Room Home Decor Average Rating: ( 5.0 ) stars out of 5 stars 1 ratings, based on 1 reviews. Introduce a modern touch to the home or office with this standout Tempus quartz wall clock. Wall clock features a black plastic frame with a shatter-free lens Large 11.8'Dia. Face size View all product Details & Specifications.
You may never have heard of the 'quartz crisis,' but if you were a watchmaker or watch aficionado in the 1970s, it was unavoidable. The watchmaking industry had seen many advancements in the centuries since the first pocket watch was invented in the early 16th century, but nothing had been as seismic as the creation of the quartz watch.
Thefirst quartz clock was created in 1927 at Bell Telephone Laboratories. In the 20th century, the mythical Bell Labs was the birthplace of many of the world's most transformative inventions, and the quartz clock certainly transformed the world. It was years before the quartz mechanics were made small enough to fit into a watch, but when it happened, everything changed. So began the quartz revolution (one person's revolution is another's crisis).
That pivotal momenthappened on Christmas Day, 1969. Seiko, a Japanese watchmaking company, released the Astron, a limited edition watch that cost as much as a car. Despite those pricey beginnings, it would take only a few more years before quartz watches were so abundant that the formerly dominant watchmakers of Switzerland were in a panic.
Analog vs Digital Watches
For most of their history, watches have been analog. That is to say, they have had a face with a physical hour, minutes, and, usually, second hand. The quartz revolution in watchmaking coincided with the explosion of digital watches, which have electronic light displays. The first digital watch was released to the public in 1972 and was created by an American company, Hamilton Watch Co.
Though the first digital watch was American, it was Japan that took the concept, improved it, and made it cheaper. Seiko, naturally, led the charge and was soon one of the biggest watchmakers in the world. The groundbreaking company smartly opted to make both quartz analog and digital watches, helping them to continue to dominate a market they helped invent.
Timekeeping for dummies
To appreciate the huge transformation that quartz watches ushered in is to understandhow a quartz watch works, and that first requires briefly discussing how watches in general operate.
The original clocks used a mix of swinging pendulums and gears to keep track of seconds and then calculate up to count out minutes and hours. The revelation that pendulums were an ideal tool for keeping accurate time was first made by Galileo Galilei, perhaps best known for being the man whose defense of heliocentrism led to his house arrest for the rest of his life.
Pendulums are, indeed, handy, but hardly practical to wear on your wrists. Mechanical watches replaced them with escapements and oscillators. These two parts work together like a pendulum, tracking the passing of time through back-and-forth movements. For centuries, that was the most accurate means of keeping time. Then quartz oscillations were discovered.
How Do Quartz Watches Work?
Quartz is the second most common mineral on earth, but aside for its abundance, its most important feature is that it is piezoelectric. When electricity is sent through a quartz crystal, it vibrates, or oscillates. The frequency at which quartz crystals oscillate, always 32,678 times per second, is used to determine the passage of time.
A quartz watch uses battery power to send a constant electric charge through the quartz crystal. A quartz watch, like a mechanical watch, has gears that turn the hands (assuming it's a mechanical watch; digital displays are entirely different), but whereas a mechanical watch depends on the oscillator to keep time, in a quartz watch, the quartz crystal is the timekeeper.
Why Are Quartz Watches More Accurate Than Mechanical?
You now know the basics of how a quartz watch works, but why would a quartz watch be inherently more accurate than a mechanical watch? Well, there are a variety of factors, but the first one we'll focus on is basic physics.
For a mechanical watch to oscillate, energy must be sent through its many parts to turn the gears, escapement, and oscillator. That energy is either supplied by manually winding the watch or, in automatic watches, by the natural movement of the wearer's wrists.
Those moving parts create friction and consume energy, meaning that no matter how regularly you wind your watch, some of your effort is being lost. A quartz watch minimizes moving parts and gets its energy from a battery, so the power necessary to keep the crystal oscillating isn't lost.
Speaking of oscillations, the natural frequency of quartz is also just a much more reliable means of keeping time than the physical movements of a mechanical watch, no matter how well-crafted it might be. Even the greatest watchmakers in Switzerland are constrained by the physical realities of creating an incredibly intricate machine.
The slightest mistake will change how accurate the watch works.A quartz crystal will always oscillate at the same frequency, no matter how poorly designed the rest of the watch is.
Finally, timekeeping accuracy is affected by the natural forces of the universe; specifically, gravity. Like everything else, the mechanical parts of a watch are subject to gravity's pull. Watchmakers have been wrestling with this for centuries, and have found numerous solutions to this problem, including the incredibly cool-looking tourbillon designs.
Modern mechanical watch designs have mostly eliminated the effects of gravity, but for quartz watches, it isn't even an issue. A quartz crystal will oscillate the same no matter what.
Here is one guy's take on why a quartz watch should probably be your watch of choice for your everyday carry (EDC) – the reliable watch you wear on a daily basis.
Quartz Digital Clock Radios
How Much More Accurate Are Quartz Watches?
Like mechanical watches, quartz watches can vary dramatically in quality. Yet, regardless of quality differences, the average accuracy of a standard quartz watch will begreater than or equal to the best mechanical watches in the world.
With all this talk of accuracy, though, it's important to understand that we're talking about the gain or loss of mere seconds per day. A typical quartz watch gains or loses one second a day, while the best mechanical watches average three seconds. The best quartz watches on the market average a change of .02 seconds a day.
These changes are so small that you generally only notice them after a collective gain or loss of a few weeks or more. Generally, the only time people need something with greater accuracy than a standard quartz watch is when they're doing scientific measurements. For those people, there exists atomic clocks and watches.
For the rest of us mere mortals, a quartz watch will more than accurate enough to make sure you never miss the start of the big game.
In watchmaking, the quartz crisis is the upheaval in the industry caused by the advent of quartz watches in the 1970s and early 1980s, that largely replaced mechanical watches around the world.[1][2] It caused a significant decline of the Swiss watchmaking industry, which chose to remain focused on traditional mechanical watches, while the majority of the world's watch production shifted to Asian companies such as Seiko, Citizen, and Casio in Japan that embraced the new electronic technology.[3][4]
The quartz crisis took place amid the global Digital Revolution (Third Industrial Revolution) which was gaining momentum during the late 1950s.[5][6] The crisis started with the Astron, which was the world's first quartz watch introduced by Seiko in December 1969.[3][4][7][8] The key advances included replacing the mechanical or electromechanical movement with a quartz clock movement as well as replacing analog displays with digital displays such as LED displays and later liquid-crystal displays (LCDs).[3][4][8] In general, quartz timepieces are much more accurate than mechanical timepieces, in addition to having a much lower sale price.[3][4][9]
History[edit]
Before the crisis[edit]
During World War II, Swiss neutrality permitted the watch industry to continue making consumer time-keeping apparatus, while the major nations of the world shifted timing apparatus production to timing devices for military ordnance. As a result, the Swiss watch industry enjoyed an effective monopoly. The industry prospered in the absence of any real competition. Thus, prior to the 1970s, the Swiss watch industry had 50% of the world watch market.[10]
In the early 1950s a joint venture between the Elgin Watch Company in the United States and Lip of France to produce an electromechanical watch – one powered by a small battery rather than an unwinding spring – laid the groundwork for the quartz watch.[11] Although the Lip-Elgin enterprise produced only prototypes, in 1957 the first battery-driven watch was in production, the American-made Hamilton 500.
In 1954, Swiss engineer Max Hetzel developed an electronic wristwatch that used an electrically charged tuning fork powered by a 1.35 volt battery. The tuning fork resonated at precisely 360 Hz and it powered the hands of the watch through an electromechanical gear train. This watch was called the Accutron and was marketed by Bulova, starting in 1960. Although Bulova did not have the first battery-powered wristwatch, the Accutron was a powerful catalyst, as by that time the Swiss watch-manufacturing industry was a mature industry with a centuries-old global market and deeply entrenched patterns of manufacturing, marketing, and sales.
Beginning of the revolution[edit]
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, both Seiko and a consortium of Switzerland's top watch firms, including Patek Philippe, Piaget and Omega, fiercely competed to develop the first quartz wristwatch.[4][12] In 1962, the Centre Electronique Horloger (CEH), consisting of around 20 Swiss watch manufacturers, was established in Neuchâtel to develop a Swiss-made quartz wristwatch, while simultaneously in Japan, Seiko was also working on an electric watch and developing quartz technology.[13]
One of the first successes was a portable quartz clock called the Seiko Crystal Chronometer QC-951. This portable clock was used as a backup timer for marathon events in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.[4] In 1966, prototypes of the world's first quartz pocket watch were unveiled by Seiko and Longines in the Neuchâtel Observatory's 1966 competition.[14] In 1967, both the CEH and Seiko presented prototypes of quartz wristwatches to the Neuchâtel Observatory competition.[4][15]
On 25 December 1969, Seiko unveiled the Astron, the world's first quartz watch, which marked the beginning of the quartz revolution.[3][4][14][16] The first Swiss quartz analog watch – the Ebauches SA Beta 21 containing the Beta 1 movement – arrived at the 1970 Basel Fair.[14][17] The Beta 21 was released by numerous manufacturers including the Omega Electroquartz. On 6 May 1970, Hamilton introduced the Pulsar – the world's first electronic digital watch.[18]
The rise of quartz[edit]
In 1974 Omega introduced the Omega Marine Chronometer, the first watch ever to be certified as a marine chronometer, accurate to 12 seconds per year using a quartz circuit that produces 2,400,000 vibrations per second. In 1976 Omega introduced the Omega Chrono-Quartz, the world's first analogue-digital chronograph, which was succeeded within 12 months by the Calibre 1620, the company's first completely LCDchronograph wristwatch.
Despite these dramatic advancements, the Swiss hesitated to embrace quartz watches. At the time, Swiss mechanical watches dominated world markets. In addition, excellence in watchmaking was a large component of Swiss national identity. From their position of market strength, and with a national watch industry organized broadly and deeply to foster mechanical watches, many in Switzerland thought that moving into electronic watches was unnecessary. Others outside Switzerland, however, saw the advantage and further developed the technology.[19] By 1978, quartz watches overtook mechanical watches in popularity, plunging the Swiss watch industry into crisis while at the same time strengthening both the Japanese and American watch industries. This period of time was marked by a lack of innovation in Switzerland at the same time that the watch-making industries of other nations were taking full advantage of emerging technologies, specifically quartz watch technology, hence the term 'quartz crisis'.
As a result of the economic turmoil that ensued, many once-profitable and famous Swiss watch houses became insolvent or disappeared. This period of time completely upset the Swiss watch industry both economically and psychologically. During the 1970s and early 1980s, technological upheavals, i.e. the appearance of the quartz technology, and an otherwise difficult economic situation resulted in a reduction in the size of the Swiss watch industry. Between 1970 and 1983, the number of Swiss watchmakers dropped from 1,600 to 600.[20][21] Between 1970 and 1988, Swiss watch employment fell from 90,000 to 28,000.[14]
Outside Switzerland, the crisis is often referred to as the 'quartz revolution', particularly in the United States where many American companies had gone out of business or had been bought out by foreign interests by the 1960s. When the first quartz watches were introduced in 1969, the United States promptly took a technological lead in part due to microelectronics research for military and space programs. American companies like Texas Instruments, Fairchild Semiconductor, and National Semiconductor started the mass production of digital quartz watches and made them affordable.[1] It did not remain so forever; by 1978 Hong Kong exported the largest number of electronic watches worldwide, and US semiconductor companies came to pull out of the watch market entirely. With the exception of Timex and Bulova, the remaining traditional American watch companies, including Hamilton, went out of business and sold their brand names to foreign competitors; Bulova would ultimately sell to the Japanese-owned Citizen in 2008.[22]
Aftermath[edit]
The Swatch Group[edit]
Quartz Digital Clock Movements
By 1983, the crisis reached a critical point. The Swiss watch industry, which had 1,600 watchmakers in 1970, had declined to 600.[20][21] In March 1983, the two biggest Swiss watch groups, ASUAG (Allgemeine Schweizerische Uhrenindustrie AG) and SSIH (Société Suisse pour l'Industrie Horlogère), merged to form ASUAG/SSIH which later became SMH (Société de Microélectronique et d'Horlogerie) in order to save the industry.[23] This organization was the predecessor of the Swatch Group, which would be instrumental in reviving the Swiss watch industry giving a new bill of health to all brands concerned and, in 1998, was renamed the Swatch Group – the largest watchmanufacturer in the world.[23][24]
The Swatch product was sealed in a plastic case, sold as a disposable commodity with little probability of repair, and had fewer moving parts (51) than mechanical watches (about 91). Furthermore, production was essentially automated, which resulted in higher profitability.[25] The Swatch was a huge success; in less than two years, more than 2.5 million Swatches were sold.[13] Besides its own product line Swatch, the Swatch Group also acquired other watch brands including Blancpain, Breguet, Glashütte Original, Harry Winston, Longines, Omega, and Tissot.[26][27]
Renaissance of mechanical watches[edit]
The larger global market still largely reflected other trends, however. In the US domestic market, for example, the Swatch was something of a 1980s fad resting largely on variety of colors and patterns, and the bulk of production still came from offshore sites such as China and Japan, in digitally-dominated or hybrid brands like Casio, Timex, and Armitron.
Digital Clock Quartz Crystal
On the other hand, the quartz revolution drove many Swiss manufacturers to seek refuge in (or be winnowed out to) the higher end of the market, such as Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet, and Rolex. Mechanical watches have gradually become luxury goods appreciated for their elaborate craftsmanship, aesthetic appeal, and glamorous design, sometimes associated with the social status of their owners, rather than simple timekeeping devices.[28][29]
The rise of smartwatches[edit]
Since the 2010s, smartwatches have begun to significantly increase their shares in global watch market, especially after the launch of Apple Watch in 2015.[30][31][32] The current rise of smartwatches is occurring amid the global Fourth Industrial Revolution, and there are concerns over the formation of a new type of crisis which may further threaten the Swiss watchmaking industry, even though it is unlikely as those who purchase automatic and mechanical watches are usually more affluent in society and would not blanch at the opportunity to flaunt their social status.[33][34][32][35]
Quartz Digital Clock Radio
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ abSmithsonian: The quartz revolution revitalized the U.S. watch industry.Archived June 15, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
- ^Harvard Business Review: Seiko Watch Corporation: Moving Upmarket
- ^ abcdeOctober 10, Joe Thompson; 2017. 'Four Revolutions: Part 1: A Concise History Of The Quartz Revolution'. HODINKEE. Retrieved 2019-03-03.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
- ^ abcdefgh'The Quartz Crisis and Recovery of Swiss Watches | Relation between Timepieces and Society'. THE SEIKO MUSEUM. Retrieved 2019-03-03.
- ^Hodson, Richard (2018-11-28). 'Digital revolution'. Nature. 563 (7733): S131. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-07500-z. PMID30487631.
- ^'A Brief History of the Digital Revolution'. UK Research and Innovation. Retrieved 2019-03-02.
- ^'A Tale Of Quartz | The Quartz Crisis and Revolution'. Govberg Jewelers. 2015-07-08. Retrieved 2019-03-03.
- ^ ab'The Quartz Crisis'. Crown & Caliber Blog. 2018-04-12. Retrieved 2019-03-03.
- ^'Reasons to Own an Inexpensive Quartz Watch | Bob's Watches Rolex Blog'. Bob's Watches. 2018-08-02. Retrieved 2019-03-03.
- ^David Landes, Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1983.
- ^Rene Rondeau, The Watch of the Future: The Story of the Hamilton Electric Watch, Corte Madera, California, 1992, pp. 50.
- ^June 24, Cara Barrett; 2015. 'Collecting The First Swiss Quartz Movement: 5 Beta-21 Watches To Look For'. HODINKEE. Retrieved 2019-03-03.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
- ^ abMarkets in Time: The Rise, Fall, and Revival of Swiss WatchmakingArchived July 3, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ abcd1969: Seiko's Breakout Year.
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Ajanta Quartz Digital Clock Manual
External links[edit]
Quartz Digital Wall Clock
