Quartz Watches

Watches have been made from mechanical parts for hundreds of years. Mechanical watches are of course beautiful works of art that can be worn on the wrist. They’re intricate devices that require no battery power and can provide accurate time measurement for a very long period of time. There is nothing wrong with a mechanical watch except that to maintain them, service is needed, and in many cases the service may cost more than a mechanical watch is worth unless it is a higher end model.

Quartz watches were an innovation that made timepieces accessible to everyone. Quartz watches are much more accurate, cheaper to make and maintain, and easier to add multiple complications such as a chronograph (stop watch), countdown timers, world time, calendars, and radio control.

When we talk about the accuracy of a timepiece, a very high end mechanical watch may gain or lose somewhere between 2 and 7 seconds per day, 20-30 is not uncommon and in some cases a poorly maintained or cheap watch may gain or lose several minutes per day. A typical cheap quartz watch will gain or lose up to 30 seconds per month, and a better quartz watch will gain or lose up to 15 seconds per month. These are on par with the most expensive mechanical time pieces on the market and you can get this accuracy for a few dollars.

Quartz watches can be even more accurate than this. Many models exist that lose or gain as little as 10 seconds per year, some as little gain or loss as 5 seconds per year, and a few special (and expensive) models that lose or gain an average of only 1 second per year.

However if your budget doesn’t allow for a $20,000 watch yet, radio controlled watches can be had for less than the price of a meal for two at some fast food places. Radio controlled watches adjust themselves each night using radio waves sent by the atomic clock in Colorado (for people in North America). The atomic clock will gain or lose about 1 second every 300,000,000 years. Of course without the radio signal, most radio controlled watches will gain or lose about 15 seconds per month.

While mechanical watches have the advantage of not needing a battery at all, quartz watches do require a battery, and often this battery can last anywhere from 1 year to 15 or 25 years depending on if it can be recharged through solar power. Once the battery or solar rechargeable battery dies, another one can be fitted. This is the most maintenance the majority of quartz watches will need in their lifetime – battery changes.

How A Quartz Watch Works

Unlike a mechanical watch which is made up of dozens of tiny components, synthetic jewels, wheels and cogs, a quartz watch has some circuits and a chunk of quartz, cut into the shape of a tuning fork resonating at about 32,768 hertz. There is a circuit inside of the watch that counts the vibrations of the quartz and at the moment it has vibrated 32,768 times, the display advances the clock one second.

In a higher precision instrument like watches made with the Citizen 0100 quartz movement, (which is accurate to within 1 second each year), the quartz resonates at 8.4 megahertz or 8,400,000 times per second.

The Trouble With Quartz

At first glance, quartz is better in every conceivable way. Quartz watches are not only much more accurate, they’re cheaper to buy and cheaper to maintain. In fact, they’re a lot cheaper. For example a vintage King Seiko Quartz may set someone back a mere $250 to $800 instead of $3000-$5000 dollars like a higher end Seiko might.

While many Rolexes start at $10,000 and can be bought for $70,000 to $150,000 all day, the Rolex OysterQuartz can be found for as little as $4500.

For anyone on a shoe string budget, an accurate Casio with 5 alarms and a chronograph with a 10 year battery in it can be picked up for as little as $12-$14.

So quartz watches are better and cheaper, yet people still prefer mechanical watches. Why? Well, it may have a little to do with the innovation of electronic watches also nearly destroyed the Swiss watch industry, causing what is referred to as the Quartz Crisis. I think some collectors still begrudge the quartz watch for this.

Another reason may be that quartz watches are often mass produced and seen as an unsophisticated consumables by collectors, as a happy meal toy.

Yet, there are many ignored high end specimens that are affordable but have the benefit of being made by a watch company that has been in business for 100 or even 200 years and can still service them. Since quartz watches have no moving parts (except the quartz itself), there is very little that can go wrong with them if you avoid abusing them.

With the cellphone, watches died as tools. Nobody needs a wristwatch to tell them what time it is. For this reason, quartz watches are really good at the thing watches are supposed to do yet nobody needs them to do this on the very limited wrist real estate that’s available. This is the paradox of human culture that has harmed the quartz collectables market. People don’t want a watch to tell them the time, the time is on every screen they look at, and which they look at all day. Instead watches are worn because they are art to be displayed, they are a fashion statement, they are a way to display status or wealth. Mechanical watches excel at these features, which is why many collectors ignore even the most beautifully made quartz watches.

I’m not one to complain about this, but I do think people are sleeping on quartz watches. I think $800 Seikos and vintage quartz Bulovas are more likely to be worth $1600 someday than a $150,000 mechanical Rolex is to be worth $300,000… and of course I could be wrong, but I truly enjoy the quartz watch and am considering starting a small collection.

Watches Can Still Be Tools

When phones were just phones, it made sense to carry one everywhere. Over time, governments and industry figured out how to use cellphones as machine learning devices to extract as much information from us as possible, and then used that information to sell our attention to the highest bidder.

For this reason, it no longer makes sense to keep a phone on your person all day if you want to get anything done, spend time with your own thoughts or have meaningful shared experiences with your spouse or other loved ones.

For this reason, I wear a watch. It allows me to leave my phone behind or on airplane mode. It’s also why I have a stand alone digital camera and ebook reader. The phone is no longer an ally to me, it is a thing that must be defeated, and controlled, to extract the value I need from it without giving anything up.

So now that you know a little about quartz watches, perhaps you’ll consider buying one and using it as a tool to help put distance between yourself and the ever pinging cellphone tethered smartwatch.