19 Feb
2007
19 Feb
'07
7:32 p.m.
In 1960 an engineer working for a watch
company in Switzerland discovered that a small
crystal would vibrate at a constant rate. He
found this was so accurate that it could be
used to calibrate time so he took it to
company management and said it would make
an entirely new kind of watch that had no
springs and no gears. They could not imagine
who would want such a thing. Swiss watches
dominated world commerce. They did not even
bother to patent it.
The first prototype quartz crystal watch was developed by a Swiss company,
CEH, in 1962. The first commercial quartz crystal watch was the Seiko 35SQ,
in 1969. The first to market in the USA was the Accuquartz from Bulova, a
Swiss company, in 1970.
Before there were quartz crystal oscillators in watches, Bulova developed
and sold watches with 360Hz tuning fork oscillators.
--
Kevin Schoedel <schoedel at kw.igs.net> VA3TCS