Quartz crisisThe 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.
Casiois a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturing corporation headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Its products include calculators, mobile phones, digital cameras, electronic musical instruments, and analogue and digital watches. It was founded in 1946, and in 1957 introduced the first entirely compact electronic calculator. It was an early digital camera innovator, and during the 1980s and 1990s, the company developed numerous affordable home electronic keyboards for musicians along with introducing the first mass-produced digital watches.
Chronometer watchA chronometer (χρονόμετρον, khronómetron, "time measurer") is an extraordinarily accurate mechanical timepiece, with an original focus on the needs of maritime navigation. In Switzerland, timepieces certified by the Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres (COSC) may be marked as Certified Chronometer or Officially Certified Chronometer. Outside Switzerland, equivalent bodies, such as the Japan Chronometer Inspection Institute, have in the past certified timepieces to similar standards, although use of the term has not always been strictly controlled.
ClockworkClockwork refers to the inner workings of either mechanical devices called clocks and watches (where it is also called the movement) or other mechanisms that work similarly, using a series of gears driven by a spring or weight. A clockwork mechanism is often powered by a clockwork motor consisting of a mainspring, a spiral torsion spring of metal ribbon. Energy is stored in the mainspring manually by winding it up, turning a key attached to a ratchet which twists the mainspring tighter.
La Chaux-de-FondsLa Chaux-de-Fonds (laʃodəfɔ̃) is a Swiss city in the canton of Neuchâtel. It is located in the Jura mountains at an altitude of 1000 m, a few kilometres south of the French border. After Geneva, Lausanne and Fribourg it is the fourth largest city in the Romandie, the French-speaking part of the country, with a population () of . The city was founded in 1656. Its growth and prosperity are mainly bound up with watch making. It is the most important centre of the watch-making industry in the area known as the Watch Valley.
Electric watchIn 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.
Breguet (brand)Breguet is a Swiss-French luxury watch, clock and jewelry manufacturer founded by Abraham-Louis Breguet in Paris in 1775. Since 1999, it has been a subsidiary of the Swiss Swatch Group. Headquartered in L'Abbaye, Switzerland, Breguet is one of the oldest surviving watchmaking brands and a pioneer of numerous watchmaking technologies such as the tourbillon, which was invented by Abraham Breguet in 1801. Abraham Breguet also invented and produced the world's first self-winding watch (the Perpétuelle) in 1780, as well as the world's first wristwatch in 1810 (the Breguet No.
NeuchâtelNeuchâtel (UKˌnɜːʃæˈtɛl, US-ʃɑːˈ-,_ˌnjuːʃəˈ-,_ˌnʊʃɑːˈ-, nøʃɑtɛl; Neuenburg) is a town, a municipality, and the capital of the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel on Lake Neuchâtel. Since the fusion in 2021 of the municipalities of Neuchâtel, Corcelles-Cormondrèche, Peseux, and Valangin, the city has approximately 33,000 inhabitants (80,000 in the metropolitan area). The city is sometimes referred to historically by the German name Neuenburg; both the French and German names mean "New Castle".
Torsion springA torsion spring is a spring that works by twisting its end along its axis; that is, a flexible elastic object that stores mechanical energy when it is twisted. When it is twisted, it exerts a torque in the opposite direction, proportional to the amount (angle) it is twisted. There are various types: A torsion bar is a straight bar of metal or rubber that is subjected to twisting (shear stress) about its axis by torque applied at its ends.
Clock driftClock drift refers to several related phenomena where a clock does not run at exactly the same rate as a reference clock. That is, after some time the clock "drifts apart" or gradually desynchronizes from the other clock. All clocks are subject to drift, causing eventual divergence unless resynchronized. In particular, the drift of crystal-based clocks used in computers requires some synchronization mechanism for any high-speed communication. Computer clock drift can be utilized to build random number generators.
