Before it came to represent mass production and dirt-cheap watches, quartz was once upon a time a cutting-edge technology. It was expensive at first, the wave of the future, and it nearly upended an entire industry of watchmaking, ushering in the so-called Quartz Crisis.
That's because it quickly proved that the most reliable, most accurate way to tell time was not with an intricate network of gears but with a small crystal, a battery and some tiny motors. Moreover, once the technology matured and became cheap and easy to produce, it meant that nearly anyone in the world could casually afford a highly accurate timekeeper. It put many proud and historic watchmakers out of business and became an object of derision for many a later enthusiast or snooty collector. But what else does one need to know about quartz watches before wrapping one around their wrist? Find out below.
Some Great Quartz Watches to Shop
What's so Special About Quartz?
Never mind that a quartz watch, save for the occasional battery change, requires much less servicing than its mechanical counterpart. Forget that it’s more accurate than even the most expensive, most expertly-tuned mechanical timepieces. Forget that they’re more affordable than mechanical watches. Once you dig under the hood a little and understand how the technology works, it becomes utterly fascinating — and many a watch snob has come to realize that a cheap, quartz-regulated watch isn’t so bad after all.
Better yet, quartz technology is incredibly simple and can be scaled down and augmented with other electronics and smart functions. "Hybrid" smartwatches, for example, use quartz as a base for analog timekeeping, then add on other elements like step trackers and heart rate monitors. Other watchmakers have been able to incorporate atomic timekeeping into their quartz timepieces and smartphone connectivity as well, making a watch that is super-accurate to begin with even more accurate. In short, it’s far from an old, simple and soulless technology — it continues to evolve.
Milestones In Quartz Technology
1880: French physicists Jacques and Pierre Curie discover piezoelectricity in quartz.
1927: Warren Marrison and J. W. Horton create the first quartz clock at Bell Laboratories.
1952: Both Elgin and LIP present prototypes of electronic watches, though neither uses quartz.
1957: Hamilton introduced the first consumer electronic watch.
1967: The Swiss Centre Electronique Horloge produces the Beta 1 quartz wristwatch prototype.
1969: Seiko produces the Astron, the first commercially available quartz watch. It costs 450,000 JPY, more than $11,550 today.
1971: Girard-Perregaux introduces the Caliber 350, which sets the standard for quartz oscillation at 32,768Hz, is faster than previous quartz watches and proves to be more accurate and consume less energy.
How Does a Quartz Watch Work?
Any clock needs an oscillating, regulating element to keep accurate time; on a mechanical watch, this takes the form of a balance spring and balance wheel. On a quartz watch, however, there’s a tiny quartz crystal cut out in the shape of a tuning fork. Quartz naturally vibrates at a precise frequency and also has piezoelectric properties, meaning that when pressure is exerted upon it, it produces a small volt of electricity.
The inverse of this property is also true, in that when an electric current is passed through quartz, it vibrates at a highly regular rate, usually 32,768 times per second. The watch movement’s circuit then reduces this frequency into one electric pulse per second. This impulse drives a motor, in turn moving the seconds hand and giving the quartz watch its signature once-per-second tick.
What Is High-Accuracy Quartz?
Most watches rocking a quartz movement are guaranteed accurate to around 15 seconds a month or so. This is still much better than even the best mechanical watches, but there’s a breed of quartz watches out there that can do even better: the High Accuracy Quartz (HAQ).
HAQ watches still operate under the same principles as standard quartz movements, but they take into account the one major threat to quartz accuracy: changes in temperature. HAQ watches are, thus, thermo-compensated and can detect these changes and adjust themselves accordingly, which typically results in a guaranteed accuracy rate of around 10 seconds per year.
What Is Meca-Quartz?
You'll sometimes see the term "meca-quartz" or "hybrid" associated with quartz chronograph watches. Don't be confused: these are still battery-powered watches regulated by quartz crystals. This type of technology has an interesting history and does incorporate a mechanical element, but marketing it as "mechanical" or "hybrid" is going a bit too far (in our humble opinion). A truly hybrid watch technology would be Seiko's impressively innovative Spring Drive movements.
A meca-quartz watch uses a single-step motor and connected gears to power all the chronograph hands instead of separate motors for each. This achieves two things for the user: it allows the hands to snap back to zero when reset (instead of slowly sweeping back) and it offers a feeling similar to that of operating the pushers on a mechanical chronograph (if you love that feeling then maybe meca-quartz watches are for you). The meca-quartz watches you see today mostly use affordable movements made by Seiko and provide companies with ways to offer cool chronograph designs for only a few hundred bucks or so.
Quartz Watches Can Be Collectible, Too
You'd be forgiven for thinking that "collecting" is all about mechanical watches and Rolexes. There are, however, some very interesting, high-quality and vintage quartz watches that many will consider collectible. There are also modern companies that use quartz to its full potential with refinement and other qualities that tend to be associated with mechanical luxury watches.
Vintage quartz can not only offer unique stories and represent pivotal moments in technology, but those from the '70s and '80s especially can also offer aesthetics quite unlike a lot of what else is out there. Best of all, though, vintage quartz offers a far more affordable way to approach collecting. A renewed interest in these watches has also seen watchmakers reissuing vintage quartz watches that are aimed at enthusiasts and collectors.
