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To celebrate the 40th anniversary of world’s first quartz watch, Seiko Quartz Astron, Japanese watch making giant Seiko  has prepared a series of activities that started earlier this month and will continue onto next year. First of all, Seiko held the Power Design Project exhibition in Omotesando, a district of Tokyo leads in fashion trends, from Dec1 to Dec 6. Seiko presented 40 designs based on Quartz Astron. Following, Seiko is set to release their revolutionary quartz watches at Baselworld 2010show the great future of quartz technologies. Here Let us have a full review of the 40 year development of quartz watches.

The quartz watch history began in 1959 with the Project 59A conducted by the the Research & Development laboratory in Suwa Seikosha which was (is still) under the wing of Seiko group. As early as 1880, Pierre Curie already discovered that the crystal would vibrate at a fast and precise speed when a electrical current is passed through it. But this effect was put into practical application as people did not succeed in finding a method at the time. It was not until 1927 that Warren Morrison first demonstrated that the accurate time could be measure though the ‘piezo-electric’ effect. In late 1959, Seiko successful created the first a quartz clock which was very huge-2.1×1.3m!Later, the Project 59A was started to create wearable watch using the same technology.

Three years later, Seiko presented their first R&D result-a sized-reduced quartz marine chronometer weighed at 30 kilos which was applied in Japan’s shipping industry. Seiko kept improving and developed the QC-951, a portable quartz timer, for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.But the timer still weighed.

Seiko had no choice but spared no effort to face the challenge of miniaturisation. It created the open-style stepping motor to reduced the size of the case, and invented the C-MOS IC to make a movement that could run for more than one year on a button-type battery possible.

And the quartz revolution finally took off after 10-year painstaking research and development. On Dec.25, 1969, Seiko put the Quartz Aston featuring 18K gold case into the market. The quartz Aston was accurate to five seconds per month, 100 times more precise than any existing watch .

In the following years, Seiko showcased the advances of quartz watches to the whole world. In 1973, SEIKO launched the world’s first LCD quartz watch with a six-digit display. In 1975, a multi-function LCD quartz watch was launched, bringing high accuracy to the chronograph. In 1983, SEIKO created an analogue quartz chronograph and, in 1988, SEIKO combined the best of automatic and electronic watchmaking to create A.G.S. (now known as Kinetic). Powered by the movement of the wearer, it converted kinetic energy into the electricity required to run the quartz regulated movement.

And Seiko made a respectable move in the early 70’s. It opened all their lots of quartz patents which greatly contributed to the development to the quartz watches.

Now Seiko takes the 40 anniversary of quartz as an important opportunity to review the past and look to the future. In the past 40 years, Seiko has been leading in making quartz-based watch making. And Seiko should not and will not stop making progress in this field to benefit people who love affordable watches of great designs and functionalities.

Looking forward to the Basel 2010 where Seiko will present their latest products.

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