page_title: Quartz crisis
section_title: The rise of quartz
hierarchical_section_title: Quartz crisis / History / The rise of quartz
caption_attribution_description: English: Seiko Grand Quartz 9940-8010 (Twinquartz), 1979Deutsch: Seiko Grand Quartz 9940-8010 (Twinquartz), 1979
context_page_description: 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. 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.
  The quartz crisis took place amid the global Digital Revolution which was formed during the late 1950s. The crisis started with the Astron, which was the world's first quartz watch introduced by Seiko in December 1969. 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. In general, quartz timepieces are much more accurate than mechanical timepieces, in addition to having a much lower sale price.
context_section_description: 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 LCD chronograph wristwatch.
  Despite these dramatic advancements, the Swiss hesitated in embracing 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 of Switzerland, however, saw the advantage and further developed the technology. 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. Between 1970 and 1988, Swiss watch employment fell from 90,000 to 28,000.
  Outside of 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. It was American companies like Texas Instruments, Fairchild Semiconductor, and National Semiconductor, who started the mass production of digital quartz watches and made them affordable. 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.
caption: Seiko Grand Quartz, produced in 1978
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