The Swiss newspaper Neue Zuricher Zeitung (Zurichs New Newspaper) had an interesting article about the relevance of electronic (esp quartz) watches, describing them as horological relevant collect-worthy artefacts that were long overlooked but may have a bright and great future ahead -- and I cannot agree more to this. Here: "Von der Ramschware zum Kultobjekt: Das Comeback der Quarzuhr" / "From Junk to Cult-Object: The Comeback of the Quartz-Watch" (Pierre-André Schmitt), *klikk.
The title already makes clear: here a lover of mechanical watches (Pierre-André Schmitt) has attempted to write a text about electronic watches -- as if there were no cheap (junk) mechanical watches; as if cheap watches only existed as electronic ones; as if electronic-watches were cheap junk when they started and now become cult. We won't dwell on the fact that when quartz-watches first appeared and in its early phase (#earlyQuartz: *klikk), they made every mechanical watch look like junk (cheap) because they were more expensive than anything else in the catalogues. And also trivial: not every electronic watch is relevant in a horological sense -- but the same is true for the majority of the mechanical watches, too. Anyway, lets get into the text...
Well pointed by Schmitt: the article recognizes the growing interest, especially in a younger (and less dogmatic) generation; and it is obvious: electronic watches will be a big thing in the next years ahead as the overly-emotional rejection of this branch of horology by the old dogmatists looses some steam.
However, there are some serious "inaccuracies" -- lets call it this, in order not to accuse the article of tendentious marketing or corruption of historical facts -- which I will correct below. In short: it is mostly about who was first and who invented what -- the relevance of chronology in horology (here: *klikk) -- and the article is not far from sounding like Swiss-propaganda... Lets have a look:
"The fact is that Switzerland wrote the first chapter in the history of the quartz wristwatch. In 1967, the C.E.H. [...] presented the Beta1 and Beta2 prototypes..." Well, let me put it like that: The fact that the Japanese do not have to grant insight into their development-workshops and date not prototypes but marketable products says a lot. The author of the NZZ-article is doing the Swiss watch-industry and its history a disservice here. We will return to this "chronology" several times, and I have plenty of material for further blog-posts on the subject. In any case, one can assume that there is a system at play here and that it is not simply the ignorance of an amateur-chronologist & journalist.
"Two years later [1969, MK] the crown of this research and development, the Beta21 was created and approx 10'000 Omega Beta21-ElectroQuartz were made." explains Schmitt. Well, neither did Beta21 arrive in 1969 but it was presented and initially sold in April 1970 by the participants of the C.E.H.-jointventure (Omega, IWC, Patek, Rolex, Piaget, Bulova, JLC, Universal Geneve etc), so 5 months AFTER the Japanese offered and sold hundreds of the Astron; see details about Beta21 here: *klikk and here: *klikk. But even more: until April 1970 not even 150 Beta21-movements have been made -- distributed & shared between 15 CEH-participants -- and until the end of 1970 it had been less than 300 (here: *klikk). And overall until the end of 1972 it had been 6'000 -- the number that was initially agreed on for the CEH-joint-venture -- for all 15 participants.
The author Pierre-Andre Schmitt uses two tricks to make the Swiss research-efforts look setting-the-tone and leading-the-way; one is simple but cheap and the other one dirty; lets have a look at both. These tricks were used since years already by others as well and they corrupted the view on quartz and horology ever-since. The cheap & simple one is being not as precise as one could. One or two years plus or minus... who cares, right?! The second one is dirty and it compares a prototype of the Swiss with a marketable product of the Japanese -- and from this they deduce a two-year lead for the Swiss. Beta1 & Beta2 -- 1967-prototypes -- vs Seiko Astron -- a 1969f-hotseller. This is not sound; this is not fair; this is not Swiss; but it is a very common praxis in storytelling done by industry-lobbyists; oh, yes of course this happened by mistake and without any malicious intent to reinterpret history; however: My plea is two-fold and simple: be precise in chronology. In an era when quartz-technology went in giant-steps from 1st to perfect in less than 10y (here: *klikk) every single year counts. The second suggestion: close the doors to the garages; ignore the notes from the laboratories; dont listen to the (now old) researchers and their memory-distortion and confabulation (or at least dont be too naive or take everything too serious ;-)). Indeed, no matter what was researched and explored and when: as long as it was not a marketable product it was not finished and it is irrelevant. Instead, make scientifically-worthy investigations and research; and normalize everything to the market-launch to make it comparable! More on this in a later blog-post.
Gisbert Brunner is quoted to claim that Rolex improved the Beta21-movement before putting it into their ref5100 "Texano"-Beta21... sure, the Swiss' splendor and glory of watchmaking, the crown of the crowns couldnt accept something everyone else used -- from Patek over Omega, IWC & Piaget to Rado, Enicar & Zodiac. But of course they did no such improvement but used the "standard"-Beta21; the Rolex-Beta21 shares the exact same movement as the other participants of the C.E.H.; see the details about the Rolex ref5100 "Texano" here: *klikk. Guaranteed, and either G. Brunner tried to push his new book (which is about Rolex, oooh) with a comment about the brand which is completely lacking substance or he has no clue about quartz -- it is not a secret he prefers mechanical watches and sees electronic watches as inferior. On a side note: finally, another Rolex-book... a book about a brand about which everything (everything!) has already been said -- just not by everyone. And there was one more; another Rolex-book by James Dowling but thats another blog-article.
"1970 presented Girard Perregaux their first quartzwatch produced in industrial scale -- the cal350 with a frequency of 32'768Hz" -- 1970??? Well, I have seen some (a lot) GP cal350, cal351 and cal352ff but never saw one which could be dated to 1971 or even 1970; and they are easy to date by the used integrated circuit (IC) produced by Motorola, which decoded its (the IC's) production date by year and week of this year (YYWW) -- because they produced the cal350 just for a couple of weeks in almost single quantities and the earliest I saw is coded 7208 in a cal350 GP I can rule out it was a product in 1970; it is an important watch, for sure but it didnt arrive in 1970 but 1972 -- see details here: *klikk -- again the "chronologist" tries to pre-date a watch and now by two years... a period in which quantum-leaps were made in electronic watches during this era.
"Die Schweiz [war also] auch Avantgarde der Elektronik." ("Switzerland was the avant-garde in electronic-watches as well."): this can only be phantasized with the methods to be not exactly precise with presentation dates (1970 vs 1972 etc) and compare apples to pears (prototype vs production) -- something not un-common in horological-history but not the handling of a serious journalist.
And of course: “But honor to whom honor is due…” ("Doch Ehre, wem Ehre gebührt...") – it is precisely this kind of pathetic and condescending “appreciation” that permeates the entire article and gives it this biased feel. It would have been more respectful to refrain from such platitudes and to do one's journalistic work properly, sticking to the truth and the exact sequence of events. But in this part of the article the author (Schmitt) explains that Switzerland started well but Japan was soon overtaking due to scale-effects -- these falling prices in electronic-watches were nothing special and the same was visible in Switzerland in the late 70s and 80s as well. But Japan was ahead from the start and didnt overtake but increased the technological distance even further. And I don't mean to sound like a know-it-all, but one has to take into account, it is more difficult to produce comparably good (or even better) products at a lower price than to offer comparably good products at a higher price.
But to be fair: the fact that almost all relevant innovation in electronic-watches came from Far East until Swatch used the Swiss Beyner-Grimm-innovation (ETA Delirium cal999.001) and landed a serious and important hit, is pointed out very well by Mr Schmitt.
And his closing-line of the text "Quartz-watches are also technological marvels [...] and could be the collector's items of tomorrow." is perhaps a bit too uncertain but for now there's not much to add to that. And so the main-part is not very well done, but the framework of the article is great and the publicity is important to pull electronic watches out of the dark.