Borna Bosniak
Maybe you’re just starting to get interested in watches, or maybe you’re already a seasoned watch enthusiast. In any case, when you look at watches every day, you often come across two types of watches: quartz watches and mechanical watches. And if you fall into the enthusiast category, you’re probably already familiar with how these two came about, especially when it comes to quartz and the famous story of the quartz crisis. But of course, as with the emergence of new technological advances, the transition wasn’t as smooth as going from mechanical to quartz overnight. And this period of transition is a very interesting and, in my opinion, underrated topic in watchmaking. I’m specifically talking about electric clocks. No, I’m not talking about digital clocks with integrated circuits here. This all refers to watches that have some form of mechanical time display, but are battery powered and regulated by either a tuning fork or a balance wheel. There is no need to talk about quartz regulators here.
What is an electric clock?
I think this is a great place to start. First, we need to clarify some terminology. We are talking about the difference between electric watches and electronic watches. Although these terms are often used interchangeably in everyday life, there are significant differences. Electronic devices simply use electricity to power themselves. Think of a light bulb or an electric motor. Electronic devices, on the other hand, use that energy to transmit information, usually through transistors, and perform logic. In this article we will look at both types.
The first, and perhaps most true to that description, were moving-coil movements such as the 1954 Hamilton Electric 500. They have a balance wheel much like a mechanical watch, but the key difference is the integrated coil. Since the balance wheel is only impacted in one direction, a hairspring must be used to receive the reverse swinging energy. When the balance spring swings the balance backwards, its coil is shocked as it passes a permanent magnet in the bridge, closing the contacts and pushing the balance through electromagnetic force.
Staying in the realm of contact-controlled movement, there are also fixed-coil types with balance control. As the name suggests, the coil has been moved to a fixed position within the movement, and a polished iron segment is installed in place of the balance wheel. When the balance swings and the iron swings towards the coil, it interacts with the mechanical contacts, closing the circuit and magnetizing the core of the coil, which shocks the balance. Similar to the movement of the moving coil, the hairspring causes the wheel to swing in the opposite direction.
These fixed-coil movements are also notable for being the most primitive form of electronic movement (although the Accutron is often credited with being the first). Some manufacturers have introduced diodes to reduce sparks when the iron makes contact. Lip was the first brand to do this in 1957, but other brands embraced semiconductor components as well, including Wittnauer with the Landeron mentioned above. This movement may have carried the Landeron name, but its origins lie in the ESA movement, widely considered to be one of the most important manufacturers of electric movements at the time.
Staying on the topic of electric/electronic movements with balances, the third type in existence is the so-called “balanced transistor” movement. This is the best and latest development of electronic movements with balance wheels. The addition of transistors eliminates contact switches, eliminates physical contact that can cause wear and sparks, and improves reliability. Here, the current from the battery is monitored by a circuit with transistors, which generates impulses that drive two coils in the baseplate and interact with a magnet mounted on the balance wheel. Movements like the Bifora B11 and Timex M87 had a coil in the balance and a magnet attached to the baseplate. These can be thought of as moving-coil, transistor-controlled movements (as opposed to the contact controls mentioned above).
And if you’ve been waiting for me to finally mention the Bulova Accutron, now is the time. The Accutron was the first watch ever to introduce transistors in 1960 (seven years before the ESA Dinotron). The working principle of most tuning fork movements is the same. It is equipped with a solenoid-driven tuning fork that vibrates hundreds of times per second, producing a characteristic hum. A pawl attached to the tuning fork transmits its vibrations to the multi-geared indexing mechanism at the center of the movement, which then transmits them to the gear train containing the smoothly moving seconds hand.
Apart from Bulova, ESA is known for its (relatively) high quality 916X range of tuning fork movements (part of Omega’s F300 line), but Omega has a 720Hz beat rate which is twice the beat rate of Bulova and ESA. It had a pulsing megasonic caliber. The Megasonic was actually developed by Max Hetzel, the man behind Accutron, and featured a micromotor in the tuning fork of the movement, magnetically coupled to a toothless gear within the movement.
Here we briefly discuss quartz-controlled electronic watches that use a tuning fork or balance. A circuit containing quartz replaces the basic electrical components and controls the impulses sent to the frequency of the balance or tuning fork. They are incredibly rare, with very few companies starting producing them in the early 1970s (Timex, Bulova, Citizen, to name a few), but like any electric movement, the development time is It only became even shorter and quickly disappeared.
Simultaneous development
So, we’ve talked about the different types of electrical movements, but why did they exist in the first place? In theory, this idea was similar to the one that started the development of quartz watches. The idea was that electric watches would no longer need to be wound, making them more reliable over the long term. Tuning forks also had the advantage of vibrating at a much higher frequency than mechanical watches and with much less friction.
Although Hamilton was a pioneer in this field and began development as early as the mid-1940s, production of the 500 Electric took nearly 20 years. However, the 1957 launch was rushed to get it to market first, so it would have been a good idea to give it a little more time in development, but the idea proved popular. There may be more nuanced expressions that could be used here, but dog-like would be accurate. The biggest problem was the contact coil, which wore out quickly and was difficult to replace. Hamilton addressed these issues with the 505 in 1961, but the 500 established itself as an unreliable movement in the eyes of the public.
It was Lip and Elgin who started earlier than Hamilton, if not earlier. The former developed an electric clock before the outbreak of World War I and exhibited a working prototype of an electric wristwatch alongside Elgin on 19 March 1952. That being said, these weren’t the kind of prototypes you’d see in, say, Watches and Wonders. The batteries developed by Lip had a tendency to explode, and it took until 1958 for the brand to introduce the R27 movement, which attempted to solve the spark problem by incorporating a diode.
If Fred Lipp’s biography is to be believed, he tried to drum up interest in the R27 by gifting it to Charles de Gaulle. However, given the finicky nature of the technology, he hired de Gaulle’s wife to secretly change the clock every week while the other was serviced and regulated, and the following week he delivered it to the President of France in top condition. I returned it.
At the turn of the decade, Bulova entered the electronic race with the Accutron 214 movement, introduced in November 1960. The tuning fork structure proved to be more reliable than its balance-wheel predecessor, and in fact it was the only electronic movement used in Bulova, even after quartz became widely accepted as the superior technology. has survived to this day because it chose to remain focused on the tuning fork.
Researching this article reveals that far more manufacturers make electric/electronic movements than previously thought, and the full list includes Citizen, ESA, Landeron, Luch, Porta, seiko, Timex was found to be included. Now, the more popular of these are very hard to miss, but the most well-known is probably the ESA, whose movement is used in countless Swiss watches, and whose balance wheel and This is because it included the development of both the tuning fork electric clock, as well as the chronograph. Its 9162 movement. The ESA 9210 was the only tuning fork chronograph ever produced, and although it was not mass produced, it was used in the Omega Speedsonic, Baume & Mercier Tronosonic, and Certina Chronolympics, to name a few. It was done.
It’s more like a failure than a failure
I already have a theory that if the quartz crisis hadn’t happened, electric watches might have become more popular, but honestly, that’s an unrealistic expectation. Electric watches naturally evolved into quartz watches, and a quartz-controlled electronic movement is all the proof we need. Whether it’s the fiddly switch contacts that would give the Hamilton 500 notoriety, or the Omega Megasonic’s unique micromotor, it’s probably unfair to say the electric movement failed. If electric movements didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have quartz.
As a result, electric watches are still very rare, and the space age designs of the 1960s and 70s are really quite unique, and they’re not as expensive as you might think. The only problem with owning an electric clock these days is finding someone to maintain it. It’s accurate enough when it works, but finding someone to fix it when something goes wrong is best if you already have some reliable quartz in your drawer.
I wanted to end this article by shouting out a few pages that helped me fill in a huge gap in my knowledge about electric and electronic clocks. Because you can explain in incredible detail what you read here. . So, if you want to keep learning, head to Electric Watches, La Clinique Horlogère, and Unwind in Time for delicious vintage pieces.
Feature image courtesy of Unwind in Time and L’Atelier du Temps.
