First-Hand:The First Quartz Wrist Watch: Difference between revisions
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== by Armin H. Frei, LSM<br><br>Former Research Staff Member Centre Electronique Horloger<br> == | == by Armin H. Frei, LSM<br><br>Former Research Staff Member Centre Electronique Horloger<br> == | ||
== Content:<br><br> 1. Introduction | == Content:<br><br> 1. Introduction == | ||
== 2. Centre Eléctronique Horloger (CEH), Neuchâtel<br> 2.1 Foundation<br> 2.2 Goal and Strategy<br><br> 3. Change of Strategy: Montre-bracelet à Quartz <br> 3.1 Status<br> 3,2 Initiative<br> 3.3 Change of Strategy<br><br> 4. The First Quartz Wrist Watch: Beta 1<br> 4.1 World First<br> '''<u><br></u>''' 5. Components of Beta 1<br> 5.1 Beta 1<br> 5.2 Quartz Resonator<br> 5.3 Driver Circuit <br> 5.4 Frequency Adjustment<br> 5.5 Temperature Compensation<br> 5.6 Frequency Divider<br> 5.7 Stepping Motor <br><br> 6. Beta 2<br> 6.1 Autonomy<br> 6.2 Wrong Strategy<br><br> 7. Beta 21<br> 7.1 Industrial Version<br> 7.2 Phase-out Model<br><br> 8. Chronology of the First Quartz Wrist Watch<br><br> 9. Rectification<br><br> 10. Bibliography == | |||
== In July 1967, somewhat more than 40 years ago, the world's first quartz wrist watch created by a group of researchers at the Swiss Centre Electronique Horloger in Neuchâtel, Switzerland had been assembled and successfully tested for proper operation. The watch baptized Beta 1 with the identification number CEH-1020 was fully meeting the regulatory requirements concerning men's wrist watches as postulated by the established Observatory of Neuchâtel and its famous yearly "Concours des Montres". In view of the fact that the history of the invention of the quartz wrist watch has been extensively neglected and/or mistreated in the past causing misunderstandings and confusion I have investigated on "Who contributed what, at what time and what was the relevance of this contribution" restricted to the event of the creation of the world's first quartz wrist watch. <br><br><br>'''<u>Centre Electronique Horloger (CEH), Neuchâtel</u>'''<br><br><u>Foundation:</u> The foundation of the Centre Electronique Horloger (CEH) in 1962 was a consequence of the growing threat due to the appearance of certain kinds of wrist watches in the late 50'ies which were powered by small batteries rather then by the usual springs. Such watches had been announced by Lip (France), Hamilton (USA) and Ebauches SA (Switzerland). The introduction of Max Hetzel's Accutron, the famous tuning fork watch (picture) in 1960, accelerated this process remarkably. [[Image:Image002.jpg|thumb|right]]Hetzel was a Swiss engineer, who started his investigations with Bulova in Bienne, Switzerland and later on was transferred to U.S. to direct the production of the Accutron watch. The fear to lose leading positions on the international market assembled the Swiss watchmakers under the leadership of Ebauches SA and the Swiss Horological Federation (FH) to join in a common joint stock company called CEH. The goal was simply to invent anything which was superior in at least one count of what was available on the market. This to improve the Swiss position in possible licence negociations, a rather poor vision indeed. Luckily, they found Roger Wellinger, a U.S. bound Swiss engineer, teacher and researcher, for the challenging job to create a new research laboratory in a field which was not common at all in Switzerland. Wellinger had courage, enthusiasm and farsightedness. <br><br><u>Goal and Strategy:</u> The goal set up by the Swiss watch industry was to develop electronic wrist watches with at least one advantage compared to existing products (e.g. Accutron). A fairly modest goal indeed, reflecting business and legal aspects predominantly. - The strategy to reach that goal had been set up by Roger Wellinger and consisted mainly of three elements: i) recruiting and hiring Swiss scientists, who had spent a certain time in the U.S. and were willing to come back with the intention of importing technical and scientific know-how from the U.S. to Switzerland, especially in the area of semiconductors and circuits and ii) investigating all kinds of possible subsystems and later on developing new kinds of solutions similar to the morphology developed by Prof. Fritz Zwicky, Caltec. Especially in the area of sonorous resonators, frequency dividers and displays there had been a great number of various investigations resulting in a fairly complete catalogue of possibilities and iii) building up semiconductor expertise in Switzerland. – However, none of the projects until 1965 incorporated a quartz wrist watch.<sup>1)</sup> There was neither a strategy nor a project addressing a high frequency, say 10 kHz quartz wrist watch, simply because such an enterprise was considered impossible by experts and industry leaders due to the high frequencies involved and for other reasons.<sup>2)</sup> Even worse, in 1966, when the quartz wrist watch project was already established, the president of the governing board informed the two initiators of the quartz wrist watch project that the Swiss watch industry was not interested in this new kind of a quartz wrist watch!<br><br>Since the very beginning Roger Wellinger recognized the importance of an own semiconductor laboratory. That was the only way to become independent from foreign suppliers and at the same time allowed to investigate into dedicated research. Kurt Hübner and his group started quickly and very successfully developing integrated circuits (IC) capability and competence in bipolar transistor technology and double diffused, high impedance resistors. With this it was already possible in 1965 to produce the first complex IC's. CEH was certainly in a favoured position as compared to Seiko, which equipped their first quartz wrist watch calibre 1967 with discrete transistors, resistors and capacitors, about 200 of them. – Unfortunately, since Spring 1965 the CEH and its management had been confronted for more then a full year with the CISSA project. CISSA stands for "Communauté Industrielle Suisse SA", a consortium of a number of Swiss firms together with Philips, Netherlands. The purpose of this was an unfriendly buy-out of CEH's successful semiconductor department. It was above all Roger Wellinger who fought against this fatal attempts and provided for continuous fruitful cooperation between the semiconductor department and the rest of the laboratory. <br><br><br><u>'''Change of Strategy: Montre-bracelet à Quartz'''</u> <br><u>Status:</u> The strategy and plan in the field of electronic wrist watches for the year 1965<sup>6)</sup> concentrated on three topics: i) the Swissonic calibre, basically an improved version of the Accutron with increased frequency of a tuning fork wrist watch by Max Hetzel, ii) the Alpha calibre, a wrist watch incorporating a figure 8-shaped metallic resonator with zero gravitational disturbance by Heinz Waldburger, otherwise similar to the Accutron and iii) the Beta project incorporating a metallic tuning fork like i) and ii) but newly with a small chain of frequency dividers to drive a separate motor. The Beta project at that time was the only one incorporating two electro mechanical transducers, the second transducer being an electro magnetic or a piezoelectric vibrating motor. The Beta project under the direction of Max Forrer was the most elaborate project concerning time and resources and further was the only one which never reached the status of a working calibre. - The Beta project must not be confused with the later Beta 1, Beta 2 and Beta 21 calibers, which were all high frequency quartz wrist watches.<br><br><u>Initiative:</u> On May 7, 1965, Armin Frei and Rolf Lochinger were reviewing the situation with the existing Beta project and its technical and qualitative limitations and came up with the proposition to investigate into wrist watches which were driven by an increased frequency quartz oscillator, rather then a metal tuning fork. The two had the idea of creating a very new type of wrist watch with an accuracy and stability way beyond existing watches and way beyond Forrer's Beta project. Based on previous experience with quartz, Frei's proposal was to use a single crystal quartz oscillator at sonor frequency, say in the range of 10 kHz, miniaturize it by orders of magnitude down to dimensions required for wrist watches. The reqirement of size and power consumtion was here predominant. Lochinger proposed to investigate into integrated electronic circuits suited to master increased divisional ratios. Here the requirements of power consumtion was predominant. This was a true alternative to the existing Beta project, see above. True, the new project was risky and definitely not to the mind of our cautious department head but would certainly have a great impact on the watch industry if successful. Frei and Lochinger started their initiative immediately and agreed mutually to investigate into a new project.<br><br><u>Change of strategy:</u> In November, 1965 Roger Wellinger, director CEH and responsible for the yearly strategy and plan, declared the "montre-bracelet à quartz" to become the primary strategic goal for the year 1966.<sup>7)</sup> This was a direct consequence of Armin Frei having designed, built and operated successfully a miniturized quartz oscillator prototype showing feasibility of a quartz wrist watch in the 10 kHz range in 4Q65. In 1Q66 Frei disposed already of a miniaturized quartz oscillator prototype with an 8192 Hz quartz resonator (picture), a novel fully integrated driver circuit running at less than four microamps current consumption (black epoxy covered IC with red dot) and a frequency adjustment set up (upper black epoxy covered IC without a dot), all these components survived till and including the industrial phase with minor improvements only. At that time the term "montre-bracelet à quartz" appeared the first time officially in CEH's documents, and it had to be defended against the many internal and external opponents of this new direction. Never mind the rest of the quartz wrist watch was still not worked out yet or decided upon, Wellinger requested that a general systems invention disclosures on the "Montre-bracelet électronique à quartz" had to be worked out.<sup>8)</sup> == | == In July 1967, somewhat more than 40 years ago, the world's first quartz wrist watch created by a group of researchers at the Swiss Centre Electronique Horloger in Neuchâtel, Switzerland had been assembled and successfully tested for proper operation. The watch baptized Beta 1 with the identification number CEH-1020 was fully meeting the regulatory requirements concerning men's wrist watches as postulated by the established Observatory of Neuchâtel and its famous yearly "Concours des Montres". In view of the fact that the history of the invention of the quartz wrist watch has been extensively neglected and/or mistreated in the past causing misunderstandings and confusion I have investigated on "Who contributed what, at what time and what was the relevance of this contribution" restricted to the event of the creation of the world's first quartz wrist watch. <br><br><br>'''<u>Centre Electronique Horloger (CEH), Neuchâtel</u>'''<br><br><u>Foundation:</u> The foundation of the Centre Electronique Horloger (CEH) in 1962 was a consequence of the growing threat due to the appearance of certain kinds of wrist watches in the late 50'ies which were powered by small batteries rather then by the usual springs. Such watches had been announced by Lip (France), Hamilton (USA) and Ebauches SA (Switzerland). The introduction of Max Hetzel's Accutron, the famous tuning fork watch (picture) in 1960, accelerated this process remarkably. [[Image:Image002.jpg|thumb|right]]Hetzel was a Swiss engineer, who started his investigations with Bulova in Bienne, Switzerland and later on was transferred to U.S. to direct the production of the Accutron watch. The fear to lose leading positions on the international market assembled the Swiss watchmakers under the leadership of Ebauches SA and the Swiss Horological Federation (FH) to join in a common joint stock company called CEH. The goal was simply to invent anything which was superior in at least one count of what was available on the market. This to improve the Swiss position in possible licence negociations, a rather poor vision indeed. Luckily, they found Roger Wellinger, a U.S. bound Swiss engineer, teacher and researcher, for the challenging job to create a new research laboratory in a field which was not common at all in Switzerland. Wellinger had courage, enthusiasm and farsightedness. <br><br><u>Goal and Strategy:</u> The goal set up by the Swiss watch industry was to develop electronic wrist watches with at least one advantage compared to existing products (e.g. Accutron). A fairly modest goal indeed, reflecting business and legal aspects predominantly. - The strategy to reach that goal had been set up by Roger Wellinger and consisted mainly of three elements: i) recruiting and hiring Swiss scientists, who had spent a certain time in the U.S. and were willing to come back with the intention of importing technical and scientific know-how from the U.S. to Switzerland, especially in the area of semiconductors and circuits and ii) investigating all kinds of possible subsystems and later on developing new kinds of solutions similar to the morphology developed by Prof. Fritz Zwicky, Caltec. Especially in the area of sonorous resonators, frequency dividers and displays there had been a great number of various investigations resulting in a fairly complete catalogue of possibilities and iii) building up semiconductor expertise in Switzerland. – However, none of the projects until 1965 incorporated a quartz wrist watch.<sup>1)</sup> There was neither a strategy nor a project addressing a high frequency, say 10 kHz quartz wrist watch, simply because such an enterprise was considered impossible by experts and industry leaders due to the high frequencies involved and for other reasons.<sup>2)</sup> Even worse, in 1966, when the quartz wrist watch project was already established, the president of the governing board informed the two initiators of the quartz wrist watch project that the Swiss watch industry was not interested in this new kind of a quartz wrist watch!<br><br>Since the very beginning Roger Wellinger recognized the importance of an own semiconductor laboratory. That was the only way to become independent from foreign suppliers and at the same time allowed to investigate into dedicated research. Kurt Hübner and his group started quickly and very successfully developing integrated circuits (IC) capability and competence in bipolar transistor technology and double diffused, high impedance resistors. With this it was already possible in 1965 to produce the first complex IC's. CEH was certainly in a favoured position as compared to Seiko, which equipped their first quartz wrist watch calibre 1967 with discrete transistors, resistors and capacitors, about 200 of them. – Unfortunately, since Spring 1965 the CEH and its management had been confronted for more then a full year with the CISSA project. CISSA stands for "Communauté Industrielle Suisse SA", a consortium of a number of Swiss firms together with Philips, Netherlands. The purpose of this was an unfriendly buy-out of CEH's successful semiconductor department. It was above all Roger Wellinger who fought against this fatal attempts and provided for continuous fruitful cooperation between the semiconductor department and the rest of the laboratory. <br><br><br><u>'''Change of Strategy: Montre-bracelet à Quartz'''</u> <br><u>Status:</u> The strategy and plan in the field of electronic wrist watches for the year 1965<sup>6)</sup> concentrated on three topics: i) the Swissonic calibre, basically an improved version of the Accutron with increased frequency of a tuning fork wrist watch by Max Hetzel, ii) the Alpha calibre, a wrist watch incorporating a figure 8-shaped metallic resonator with zero gravitational disturbance by Heinz Waldburger, otherwise similar to the Accutron and iii) the Beta project incorporating a metallic tuning fork like i) and ii) but newly with a small chain of frequency dividers to drive a separate motor. The Beta project at that time was the only one incorporating two electro mechanical transducers, the second transducer being an electro magnetic or a piezoelectric vibrating motor. The Beta project under the direction of Max Forrer was the most elaborate project concerning time and resources and further was the only one which never reached the status of a working calibre. - The Beta project must not be confused with the later Beta 1, Beta 2 and Beta 21 calibers, which were all high frequency quartz wrist watches.<br><br><u>Initiative:</u> On May 7, 1965, Armin Frei and Rolf Lochinger were reviewing the situation with the existing Beta project and its technical and qualitative limitations and came up with the proposition to investigate into wrist watches which were driven by an increased frequency quartz oscillator, rather then a metal tuning fork. The two had the idea of creating a very new type of wrist watch with an accuracy and stability way beyond existing watches and way beyond Forrer's Beta project. Based on previous experience with quartz, Frei's proposal was to use a single crystal quartz oscillator at sonor frequency, say in the range of 10 kHz, miniaturize it by orders of magnitude down to dimensions required for wrist watches. The reqirement of size and power consumtion was here predominant. Lochinger proposed to investigate into integrated electronic circuits suited to master increased divisional ratios. Here the requirements of power consumtion was predominant. This was a true alternative to the existing Beta project, see above. True, the new project was risky and definitely not to the mind of our cautious department head but would certainly have a great impact on the watch industry if successful. Frei and Lochinger started their initiative immediately and agreed mutually to investigate into a new project.<br><br><u>Change of strategy:</u> In November, 1965 Roger Wellinger, director CEH and responsible for the yearly strategy and plan, declared the "montre-bracelet à quartz" to become the primary strategic goal for the year 1966.<sup>7)</sup> This was a direct consequence of Armin Frei having designed, built and operated successfully a miniturized quartz oscillator prototype showing feasibility of a quartz wrist watch in the 10 kHz range in 4Q65. In 1Q66 Frei disposed already of a miniaturized quartz oscillator prototype with an 8192 Hz quartz resonator (picture), a novel fully integrated driver circuit running at less than four microamps current consumption (black epoxy covered IC with red dot) and a frequency adjustment set up (upper black epoxy covered IC without a dot), all these components survived till and including the industrial phase with minor improvements only. At that time the term "montre-bracelet à quartz" appeared the first time officially in CEH's documents, and it had to be defended against the many internal and external opponents of this new direction. Never mind the rest of the quartz wrist watch was still not worked out yet or decided upon, Wellinger requested that a general systems invention disclosures on the "Montre-bracelet électronique à quartz" had to be worked out.<sup>8)</sup> == |