Not all images were able to load for printing. Please close the print window and try again. The Difference Between Mechanical and Quartz Watches
Back to basics with our new educational series, destined to learn everything there’s to know about watches.
Editor’s note – As our long-time readers might know, MONOCRHOME is usually quite (to say the least) technical. We like to go in-depth, to look at the ins and outs of watchmaking, sometimes tackling highly complex topics. This was the main objective behind our “Technical Perspective” series, where we’ve covered some of the most complex aspects of a mechanical watch. Yet, we must keep in mind that not all our readers are seasoned collectors and long-term watch enthusiasts. With this new series of articles named “The ABCs of Time”, we intend to bring the basics to newcomers in the world of watches, to make learning about watches and watchmaking as simple as possible, by going back to the basics.
It’s not uncommon for different technologies to mimic each other and ultimately provide the same experience. For example, an older plasma TV is very different from an LCD TV, and both differ from an OLED TV, but the experience for viewers is largely identical. And don’t forget about cathode ray tubes. You can say the same thing about watches with the quartz vs. mechanical debate. On analogue dials, they look nigh identical and relay time in the same way, while complications like dates and calendars, chronographs and so on just about operate identically (from a visual standpoint). The technology that drives them, however, is very different, and although they live harmoniously side-by-side today, that wasn’t always the case. Let’s open up the ABCs of Time series by looking at the difference between mechanical and quartz watches.
Mechanical Predates Quartz by Centuries
Mechanical timekeeping goes back to the late 13th century with European clock towers that used a primitive escapement and gears with hanging weights to measure time, and bells would signal the hours as dials and hands were yet to be used. This established the three pillars of mechanical timekeeping – a power source (weights in this case), a regulator (known as the balance wheel today) and an escapement that works in tandem with the regulator to provide fixed impulses to advance the time in a controlled manner.
Fast forward to the 15th century, when internal mainsprings began to replace weights, which allowed for smaller, portable clocks that soon led to wearable timepieces. Early “pocket watches” were small, spring-driven clocks that were worn around the neck, but they had a dial and hour hand that marched us closer to modern watches. The balance spring invented by Christiaan Huygens in 1675, and the lever escapement invented by Thomas Mudge around 1755 were game changers, allowing for slim, accurate and contemporary pocket watches as we know them today. A handful of improving escapement designs came before, but they were all a bit experimental by today’s standards. The lever escapement design is perfected and still used in the majority of modern watch movements.
How Does a Mechanical Watch Movement Work?
A modern mechanical watch starts with a power source independent of electricity (no batteries involved). A coiled mainspring contained in a barrel powers the watch. It can be wound with the crown, usually located at 3 o’clock, which also sets the time, or via a weighted rotor at the back of automatic movements that spins by natural wrist movement. A series of gears, known as the gear train, transfers the energy of the unwinding mainspring to the escapement and balance. The latter two manage the release of this energy with controlled, back-and-forth impulses from an escape wheel gear engaging with a pallet fork – the tick/tock of a watch.
Without the escapement, regulated by the oscillating balance wheel with its own hairspring, the mainspring would quickly unwind like a spring-driven walking toy. Along the gear train are several gears and arbours that act as the “watch transmission”, and although not generally interchangeable, most time-only watch movements have common layouts. Some of the gears rotate the hands directly, such as the second gear (or second wheel, as it’s known) that rotates once per hour, so it’s attached to the minute hand. The second wheel also rotates the hour hand via a 12:1 reduction gear system called the motion work (making it rotate once every 12 hours). The fourth wheel rotates once per minute, so it’s attached to the seconds hand. This is simplifying things, but that’s the gist of it for a standard three-hand dial.
Complications and Modules
Once complications (any additional function on top of the standard hours, minutes and seconds) or unconventional displays come into the picture, like calendars, chronographs, wandering hours and so on, separate modules with their own gear train systems are often “plugged into” the base movement for the additional functionality. Dubois-Depraz in Switzerland is a major module supplier and specialises in perpetual calendars and chronographs. Some watchmakers handle modules themselves in-house, while other movements have complications integrated and don’t require separate modules.
About Quartz Watches
There’s an era known as the Quartz Crisis in the 1970s and 1980s, when inexpensive, exceptionally accurate and trouble-free Japanese electric watches took the industry by storm, permanently decimating many traditional watchmakers and severely threatening many others. You never had to wind quartz watches; they were more accurate per month than mechanical watches were per day, and mass production was significantly cheaper and easier. Many feared that mechanical watchmaking would go the way of Blockbuster and Tower Records following online streaming (so to speak, as that wasn’t a thing yet), but tradition ultimately endured, and mechanical watchmaking is again thriving. Both quartz and mechanical watches live side-by-side on store shelves today, and many companies offer both types within their portfolios, so they certainly don’t compete with each other like they once did.
Electric Watches Before Quartz
Quartz watches weren’t the first to be battery powered, as that honour goes to Hamilton’s Ventura from 1957. This was more of a hybrid as the mechanical mainspring was replaced with an electronic equivalent, but the mechanical balance and escapement remained. It was basically a mechanical watch that you didn’t have to wind, which certainly sounds cool, but it was problematic.
The watch itself had a radical design with an asymmetrical, triangular shield-shaped case and futuristic dial with an electrical wave pattern in the middle and applied round indices with extending lines, giving off an atomic age vibe. Elvis Presley himself wore it in the 1961 movie Blue Hawaii, which helped keep it at the forefront of popularity, but technical issues ultimately doomed the model. The original calibre, Model 500, was replaced with Model 500A and then Model 505, but battery drain, inaccuracy and reliability issues persisted, and many required premature servicing. That said, it was an innovative and pioneering effort by Hamilton and a real glimpse at the future.
In 1960, Bulova introduced the Accutron, which was the first all-electric watch. The mechanical timing elements from the Ventura were replaced with a high-vibrating, 360Hz steel alloy tuning fork, which hummed instead of ticked and was powered by an electronic oscillator. Accutron’s calibre 214 had only 12 moving parts and an accuracy of two seconds per day, which rivals the most accurate mechanical watches today. The name Accutron came from “Accuracy through Electronic” and this technology was heavily utilised by NASA’s early space program. We all know that Buzz Aldrin wore an Omega Speedmaster on the moon, but he also had an Accutron timer inside the lunar lander.
Other electric watch efforts came and went in the 1960s, but like Beta vs. VHS, it was quartz technology that ultimately won the electric watch battle. Even before Hamilton’s Ventura, brands like Elgin had electric watch prototypes as early as 1952, but none were ready for a commercial release.
1969 Seiko Astron – The First Quartz Wristwatch
The industry changed forever when Seiko introduced the world’s first quartz watch in Tokyo, which was 100 times more accurate than a mechanical counterpart. It was initially priced as much as a small car, as cutting-edge technology (at the time), and a gold case came at a cost, but quartz technology was soon easy and inexpensive to mass produce and world adoption was rapid. Seiko’s quartz technology actually debuted years earlier as a demonstration in 1963 with the Crystal Chronometer, a table clock that was used during the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. A battery in the Astron vibrated a quartz crystal shaped as a tuning fork, which differed from the miniature tuning fork of the Accutron that was comprised of a steel alloy known as Elinvar. The advantage of quartz was its incredible stability and consistency, vibrating at a constant 32,768Hz, while a steel counterpart wasn’t as precise and susceptible to temperature fluctuations and shocks. Quartz crystals also consumed less power from the tiny watch batteries.
How Does a Quartz Watch Movement Work?
If you have a consistent motion, such as the precise back-and-forth swing of a balance wheel, you can translate that into accurate time measurements. The faster the frequency (4Hz in most “fast” mechanical watches), the more accurate a watch can be. With a quartz movement, a quartz crystal, again shaped as a tuning fork, vibrates at an incredible yet extremely consistent frequency of 32,768Hz (vs 4Hz) after the battery sends an electrical current through the quartz crystal.
You can see why quartz movements are much more accurate than the best mechanical counterparts. In fact, mechanical calibres from Rolex are certified accurate to +/-2 seconds per day, while the best quartz watch from Citizen, Calibre 0100, is accurate to one second per year. From a technical standpoint, it’s not even competitive.
An integrated circuit tracks the tuning fork’s vibrations and converts them to a much slower frequency that’s feasible for timekeeping, usually one electrical pulse per second, driving an electric motor to operate the gear train. This is evident by the seconds hand that ticks once per second instead of a smooth mechanical sweep. Quartz watches can also utilise an LCD digital display, where a microchip sends information to a screen instead of a motor driving physical hands. The same quartz technology works behind the scenes, but a screen allows for a more direct display of the time. This is also an inexpensive way to have advanced complications like a chronograph, calendar, alarm, and so on, adding tremendous functionality at a relatively nominal cost compared to mechanical movements that could cost thousands of dollars. Digital displays also allowed for innovations like calculators, arcade-style games, memory banks and more, that’s well beyond the capabilities of a mechanical watch.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Quartz watches have many advantages, from significantly lower prices, vastly superior accuracy, virtually no maintenance and a smorgasbord of additional digital complications at a nominal price. Traditional complications are also widespread on analogue quartz dials and are usually less expensive than mechanical options. An old quartz disadvantage was the need to replace a battery every year early on, and generally every five years today, but advanced solar technology like Citizen’s Eco Drive has solved the issue. Many high-end brands continue to embrace quartz movements like Omega, Breitling, Tag Heuer and Cartier, and Rolex had several quartz models in the not-so-distant past. So, why would anyone choose a watch that isn’t quartz?
Well, there’s one thing missing from quartz watches – the romance of it all. Mechanical watches have centuries of history, and these small autonomous marvels never need a battery. You wind it, you interact with it, you hear it beat. The art of a mechanical movement, especially one that’s hand-decorated, can’t be matched by the more sterile commodity that is quartz. You can drive a sedan to get from A to B, or you can drive an exotic sports car that ultimately does the same thing, but with much more emotional appeal. Watch enthusiasts, collectors, and traditionalists usually demand a mechanical watch for its “soul and heartbeat.” Logic and practicality don’t always apply in the watch game, as you sometimes have to just follow your heart.
