Restoring History, One Watch at a Time

In the previous article, we saw how the electronic circuit in a quartz watch maintains the quartz crystal in oscillation. Most watch crystals vibrate at 32 768 Hz. A quartz watch mechanism with a second hand needs an electrical pulse once every second to operate the stepper motor which drives the train.

A Brief History on Quartz Watch Batteries Battery powered watches were experimented with during the 20th century. They first became popular in the late 1950’s but were not quartz at the time. They used a small button cell (so called because of their size and shape)....