The quartz crisis was a period of upheaval in watchmaking during the 1970s and 1980s, caused by the arrival of quartz watches. It matters because quartz watches overtook mechanical ones in popularity and threw the Swiss watch industry into crisis.
When did the quartz crisis begin?
The start of the crisis is dated to December 1969. That month Seiko released the Astron, the first quartz watch. Seiko calls the Astron 35SQ the first quartz wristwatch and says it changed the watch industry permanently. Switzerland had been working on quartz too. In 1962 a group of Swiss watch manufacturers set up the Centre Electronique Horloger (CEH) in Neuchâtel to develop a Swiss quartz wristwatch. Switzerland’s first quartz analog watch, the Ebauches SA Beta 21, was shown at the 1970 Basel Fair.
How does a quartz watch work?
A quartz watch passes an electric current through a quartz crystal. The crystal oscillates, and those oscillations regulate how accurately the watch keeps time. The technology spread quickly. By 1978 quartz watches had become more popular than mechanical ones. Seiko says quartz watches made up more than half of world watch production by 1982.
How did Swiss watchmaking recover?
The damage was deep. Employment in the Swiss watch industry fell from 90,000 in 1970 to 28,000 in 1988. Part of the recovery came from quartz itself. The Swatch, a cheap quartz watch, sold in great numbers within two years. Its success helped the Swiss industry get back on its feet.
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