Loupe Notes. A short explainer on the technology inside most of the watches ever sold.
Your quartz watch isn’t really ticking. It’s counting. Inside it, a tiny crystal vibrates 32,768 times every second, and everything else in the watch exists to turn that vibration into the time.
Watch the video above, or read the high-level version below. More explainers are on our YouTube channel.
How it works
A quartz watch has six parts: a battery, a quartz crystal, an integrated circuit, a stepper motor, a gear train and the hands. The crystal is cut as a tiny tuning fork and sealed in a small can. Quartz is piezoelectric, so it makes a voltage when squeezed and flexes when a voltage is applied, which keeps it vibrating at one very steady rate.
The number 32,768 is 2 to the power of 15. The chip halves the signal fifteen times, and what is left is one pulse a second. Each pulse flips a small magnet in the motor by half a turn, which is the tick you see, and the gears divide it down to drive the seconds, minute and hour hands.
How it is made: Miyota and Ronda
Synthetic quartz is grown, cut into thin wafers, etched into a tuning fork and trimmed by laser until it vibrates at exactly the right frequency, then sealed and assembled with the chip, coil and gears. Two names you will find inside countless watches are Miyota and Ronda.
Miyota is Citizen’s movement maker, named for the town in Nagano, Japan, where Citizen built its movement factory in 1959. It has sold movements to other brands since about 1981, and its Caliber 2035 is believed to be the most-produced movement ever, at over five billion by one estimate.
Ronda is a family-owned Swiss firm based in Lausen, founded in 1946, whose first quartz movement was designed in 1974. It has made around 20 million quartz movements a year, sold as Swiss Made or Swiss Parts, with a factory in Thailand since 1990.
Why quartz won, and its limits
Quartz is far more accurate than a typical mechanical watch, costs far less to make, is thin and tough, and needs almost no servicing. The limits are the battery, which needs replacing every few years, and the fact that a failed quartz movement is usually swapped, not repaired. Looked after, the movement itself can run for decades. Figures here are typical and vary by movement and use.
Five quartz icons
| 5. Seiko Quartz-Astron 35SQ (1969) | The first quartz wristwatch on sale; 18k gold, about US$1,250; 100 sold in the first week |
| 4. Timex Ironman Triathlon (1986) | US$34.95 at launch; about 400,000 sold in its first year by one retailer’s account |
| 3. Casio F-91W (1989) | Over 100 million sold; still made, about 3 million a year |
| 2. Casio G-Shock (1983) | Over 100 million sold |
| 1. Swatch (1983) | Hundreds of millions sold; its 333 millionth was celebrated years ago, and one source says over 550 million |
Your turn
What is the quartz watch that is your daily beater? Tell us in the comments on our Instagram reel or the YouTube video. The most-commented watch gets a deep dive into its unknown facts.
Sources: Wikipedia (Ronda, Miyota, Citizen, Astron, Timex Ironman); Time+Tide; Europa Star; WatchTime; ETHW and IEEE milestones; Teddy Baldassarre; Joyería Gordillo; JCK; and wander. Figures are company or press estimates. Diagrams in the video are original HORAKAA artwork; movement photos in the video are credited to Caliber Corner and Miyota.
