Electric watch

In horology, the term electric watch is used for the first generation electrically-powered wristwatches which were first publicly displayed by both Elgin National Watch Company and Lip on March 19, 1952, with working laboratory examples in Chicago and Paris. The Hamilton Watch Company would be the first to produce and retail an electric watch beginning in 1957, before the commercial introduction of the quartz wristwatch in 1969 by Seiko with the Astron. Their timekeeping element was either a traditional balance wheel or a tuning fork, driven electromagnetically by a solenoid powered by a battery. The hands were driven mechanically through a wheel train. They were superseded by quartz watches, which had greater accuracy and durability due to their lower parts count. Recent automatic quartz watches, which combine mechanical technology with quartz timekeeping, are not included in this classification. A weak point in early balance wheel electric watches was the switch contacts on the balance wheel, which turned the solenoid on briefly to provide the impulse to keep the wheel oscillating. These wore out and did not operate reliably. Later designs used electromagnetic sensing, with a transistor in the circuit to turn the solenoid on. Moving coil system, contact controlled: refers to watches with a balance wheel with integrated coil, fixed magnets and mechanical contacts. Examples of this technology are Hamilton 500 (first retail electric watch in 1957), Epperlein 100, Champion (Ruhla / UMF), Slava 114ChN and Timex M40. Fixed coil system, contact controlled: watches with a piece of refined iron attached to the balance wheel, a fixed coil and mechanical contacts. In order to extend the life of the watch, some of these movements included a diode to minimize sparking on the contacts. Examples of this technology are Lip electronic R 27, LIP R 148, Elgin electronic 722, 725, 910 which were the smallest electronic movements ever made and Landeron (ESA - Ebauches S.A.) 4750.

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Optical measurement method for mechanical time base characterization

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Flexure Pivot Oscillators for Mechanical Watches

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Quartz crisis

The quartz crisis was the upheaval in the watchmaking industry caused by the advent of quartz watches in the 1970s and early 1980s, that largely replaced mechanical watches around the world. 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 Japanese companies such as Seiko, Citizen, and Casio which embraced the new electronic technology.

Quartz clock

Quartz clocks and quartz watches are timepieces that use an electronic oscillator regulated by a quartz crystal to keep time. This crystal oscillator creates a signal with very precise frequency, so that quartz clocks and watches are at least an order of magnitude more accurate than mechanical clocks. Generally, some form of digital logic counts the cycles of this signal and provides a numerical time display, usually in units of hours, minutes, and seconds.

Tuning fork

A tuning fork is an acoustic resonator in the form of a two-pronged fork with the prongs (tines) formed from a U-shaped bar of elastic metal (usually steel). It resonates at a specific constant pitch when set vibrating by striking it against a surface or with an object, and emits a pure musical tone once the high overtones fade out. A tuning fork's pitch depends on the length and mass of the two prongs. They are traditional sources of standard pitch for tuning musical instruments.

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